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GRUB 2.02 Bootloader Officially Released with ZFS LZ4 & LVM RAID1 Support, More

CrAKeN

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CrAKeN

CrAKeN

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grub-2-02-bootloader-officially-released

 

GRUB 2.02 released

 

The long-anticipated GRUB 2.02 open-source bootloader software project was finally promoted to the stable channel after being in Beta stages of development for the past few years.

 

The development team took their time to finalize the release of GRUB 2.02, which should soon make its way into the stable software repositories of your favorite operating system, but it's finally here and we want to thank them for all their hard work and the awesome new features and improvements implemented so far.

 

Prominent features of GRUB 2.02 include Big-Endian UFS1 support, experimental 64-bit EXT2 support, GPT PReP support, the ability to use LVM UUIDs if available, proper handling of partitioned LVM, CBFS (coreboot) support, ZFS LZ4 support, ZFS features support, XFS V5 format support, as well as LVM RAID1 support.

 

It also ships with various fixes for non-512-byte sector devices, a new "progress" module that displays the boot progress information while reading files, support for DragonFly BSD labels and compressed HFS+ partitions, and a new "proc" filesystem framework that is being used by LUKS encrypted disks.

 

Improved security, other improvements


GRUB 2.02 improves security by implementing an optional functionality that forces all files read by the core image from disk to have a valid detached digital signature, better handles DM-RAID partitions, and adds a new "nativedisk" command that lets users switch from firmware to native disk drivers.

 

The terminal, video, network, Coreboot, and platform support was improved as well in this major release of GRUB2, which supports Apple FAT binaries on non-Apple platforms, improves the FreeDOS direct loading support compatibility, enables "linux16" on all x86 platforms, not just BIOS, and adds a new TrueCrypt ISO loader.

 

multiboot2 boot-services and memory map, and full-file EFI specification are supported as well, and we recommend studying the entire changelog attached below if you're curious to know what else is new in GRUB 2.02, whose source tarball you can download right now from our website if you fancy compiling it on your OS.

 

Changelog

Spoiler

* New/improved filesystem and disk support:
  * Big-endian UFS1.
  * Experimental 64-bit ext2 support.
  * Various fixes for non-512-byte sector devices.
  * New `proc' filesystem framework, used by LUKS disks.
  * Fix DM-RAID partition handling.
  * New `nativedisk' command to switch from firmware to native disk drivers.
  * Compressed HFS+.
  * DragonFly BSD labels.
  * CBFS (coreboot).
  * Handle partitioned LVM properly.
  * Use LVM UUIDs whenever possible.
  * GPT PReP.
  * New `progress' module that shows progress information while reading files.
  * ZFS features support.
  * ZFS LZ4 support.
  * XFS V5 format support.
  * LVM RAID1 support.

* New/improved terminal and video support:
  * Monochrome text (matching `hercules' in GRUB Legacy).
  * Morse code output using system speaker.
  * `spkmodem' output (simple data protocol using system speaker).
  * Handle Japanese special keys.
  * coreboot framebuffer.
  * Serial on ARC.
  * Native vt100 handling for grub-emu, replacing the use of the curses library.
  * New gfxmenu options for terminal window positioning, theme background image handling, and scrollbar padding, plus `item_pixmap_style' and `highlight_overlay'.
  * Support several more image types (paletted and greyscale).

* Boot protocol improvements:
  * Support Apple FAT binaries on non-Apple platforms.
  * Improve FreeDOS direct loading support compatibility.
  * Enable `linux16' on all x86 platforms, not just BIOS.
  * New TrueCrypt ISO loader.
  * multiboot2 boot-services EFI specification.
  * multiboot2 EFI memory map specification.
  * multiboot2 full-file specfication.

* New/improved network support:
  * New variables `net_default_*' containing properties of the default interface.
  * Autoload `http' and `tftp' modules if necessary.
  * Improve TFTP robustness.
  * Parse `nd' disk names in GRUB Legacy configuration files.
  * Issue separate DNS queries for IPv4 and IPv6.
  * Support IPv6 Router Advertisement to configure default router.
  * New variable net__next_server containing next server from BOOTP reply.

* Coreboot improvements:
  * CBFS support both in on-disk images (loopback) and flash.
  * Ability to launch another payload from flash or disk
  * Coreboot framebuffer
  * CBMEMC support (both logging and inspecting logs)
  * Command for inspecting coreboot timestamps (`coreboot_boottime').
  * Command for inspecting coreboot tables (`lscoreboot').
  * New target default_payload.elf.
  * Increased maximal core size.
  * Prefer pmtimer for TSC calibration.

* New/improved platform support:
  * New `efifwsetup' and `lsefi' commands on EFI platforms.
  * New `cmosdump' and `cmosset' commands on platforms with CMOS support.
  * New command `pcidump' for PCI platforms.
  * Improve opcode parsing in ACPI halt implementation.
  * Use the TSC as a possible time source on i386-ieee1275.
  * Merge PowerPC grub-mkrescue implementation with the common one.
  * Support grub-mkrescue on i386-ieee1275, sparc64, bootinfo machines such as pSeries, and mips-arc.
  * Make grub-mkrescue better support Apple Intel Macs on CD.
  * Enable GRUB Legacy configuration file parsing on EFI.
  * Support halt for Loongson 2E.
  * ARM U-Boot and EFI ports.
  * Reorganise platform-dependent code in utilities to avoid #ifdef mess.
  * AROS and Haiku support for userspace utilities.
  * Xen PV port.
  * Fix EFI stack alignment.
  * ARM64 EFI port.
  * On Linux, read partition start offsets from sysfs if possible.
  * New grub-macbless utility, and better integration with Mac firmware in grub-install.
  * Support Yeeloong 3A.
  * Add `cpuid --pae' option to detect Physical Address Extension on x86.
  * Support for USB debug dongles.
  * Support for *-emu on all platforms (previously only i386/x86_64 worked).
  * Support *-emu on Windows.
  * New platform `none' which builds only user level utilities. This is now default if target CPU is not supported.
  * Support for booting little-endian Linux kernel on powerpc.
  * Support network boot with Oracle sun4v vnet devices.
  * Added SAS disks to the IEEE 1275 Open Firmware device list.
  * Try multiple methods for TSC (timestamp counter) calibration - PIT, pmtimer, EFI Stall. If everything fails, use hardcoded frequency 800MHz.
  * Support Hyper-V Gen2 platforms which lack PIT for TSC calibration.
  * Map UEFI Persistent Memory to E820 persistent memory.
  * New Xen loader on ARM64.
  * Respect alignment requirement for block device IO buffers on EFI.

* Security:
  * Add optional facility to enforce that all files read by the core image from disk have a valid detached digital signature.

* Performance:
  * Avoid costly division operations in many places.
  * New boot time analysis framework (`./configure --enable-boot-time').
  * Initialise USB ports in parallel.
  * New `testspeed' command to test file read speed.
  * Speed-up gfxterm by storing intermediate results in more compact format.
  * Lazy LVM/mdraid scan.
  * Disk hints.

* Scripting:
  * New `eval' and `tr' commands.
  * grub-script-check fails on scripts containing no commands.

* Installation and other utility improvements:
  * Add option to compress files on installation or image creation.
  * Using grub-reboot no longer requires setting `GRUB_DEFAULT=saved'.
  * Support probing EFI System Partition (requires os-prober >= 1.58).
  * Fix inconsistent use of `GRUB_CRYPTODISK_ENABLE' and `GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK'; the latter is now used consistently.
  * grub-mount handles symbolic links to directories.
  * Support disabling submenus with `GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU' configuration key for grub-mkconfig.
  * grub-install, grub-mknetdir, grub-mkrescue, and grub-mkstandalone rewritten in C.  They should now work in supported non-Unix-like environments.
  * Native mingw support.
  * Ability to install on EFI under windows.
  * Reorganise timeout handling using new `timeout_style' environment variable and `GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE' configuration key for grub-mkconfig. Menu hotkeys pressed during a hidden timeout now boot the corresponding menu entry immediately.
  * New `file' command and grub-file utility to check file types.
  * New syslinux configuration file parser.
  * Set menu entry class to primary OS name returned by os-prober to display OS specific icon.
  * On Linux x86 detect EFI word size in grub-install and automatically select correct platform (x86_64-efi or i386-efi) to install. Requires Linux kernel 4.0 or higher.

* Build system:
  * Remove all uses of nested functions; GRUB no longer requires an executable stack.
  * Fix documentation build with Texinfo >= 5.1.
  * More robust and documented cross-compiling support.
  * Partial clang support for some platforms (experimental).
  * Partial mingw64 x86_64-efi compile support (highly experimental).
  * Partial mingw32 i386-* (other than already present i386-pc) compile support (highly experimental).
  * Support for grub-mkpasswd on Windows.
  * Eliminate the use of AutoGen.  This allowed some performance improvements to the build system.
  * Remove variable length arrays.
  * OpenBSD compile and tools support (NetBSD and FreeBSD were already supported).
  * Fix build with FreeType >= 2.5.1.
  * Make gentpl.py compatible with Python 3.  It now requires at least Python 2.6.
  * modinfo.sh contains build information now.
  * Added many new tests to improve robustness.
  * Target is built without libgcc now. Necessary builtins are reimplemented directly. This removes requirement for target-specific runtime on build system.
  * emu libusb support removed (was broken and unmaintained).
  * powerpc64le compile support.
  * Use fixed timestamp when generating GRUB image for reproducible builds.
  * Verify at build time that modules contain only supported relocations and their structure matches what boot-time module loader expects.
  * Do not require fonts on powerpc-ieee1275.

* Revision control moved to git.

 

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steven36

steven36

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Took them  long enough  GRUB 2.02 has been in beta forever and it  is/was used in stable distros  2.0.2  beta 1 came out

 

2013-12-18 20:40   

http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/
Quote

  


26.04.2017 14:27, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko пишет:
> Hello everyone. GRUB maintainers team is proud to announce GRUB 2.02 that
> we have just released. This release contains fixes for bugs uncovered in
> 2.02~rc2 and updated translations.
> 
> Full list of new features since release 2.00 is available in NEWS file.
> This includes improvements to GUI system originally introduced several
> versions ago. You just need to enable gfxmenu. We also introduced new
> platforms like arm, arm64, Xen and improved coreboot support.
> 
> We would like to thank all the people who have contributed to the project.
> 
> The tarball is available at http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.02.tar.xz
> and signature at http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.02.tar.xz.sig
> 
> Release is signed with the following fingerprint:
>  E53D 497F 3FA4 2AD8 C9B4  D1E8 35A9 3B74 E82E 4209
> 
> It's also available as a signed tag grub-2.02 in official git repository.
> 
> If you don't have xz support alternatively you may consider files
> http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.02.tar.gz and signature at
> http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.02.tar.gz.sig
> 
> If you want a binary version for windows (i386-pc, i386-efi and x86_64-efi
> flavours) it’s available under
> http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.02-for-windows.zip
> and signature at
> http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.02-for-windows.zip.sig
> 
> 

I updated documentation on https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/

  

https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg26018.html

 

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