Why the symlink to /boot/vmlinuz in root drectory??
In the root directory are a set of symlinks to the
kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-x.y.z and /boot/initrd.img-x.y.z. 1. What is the purpose of these symlinks? 2. Are they really necessary? Other distros don't have them. SYSTEM INFO: Distro is Debian 9 "Stretch"; Boot loader is GRUB2; BIOS is dual-personality set to "Legacy" (UEFI disabled). Bootable root partition is sda1. (I suspect MBR, but I'm not sure of this). There are other bootable hard disks installed (sdb); holds old distro, not mounted on boot-up. Thanks in advance. Dynosaw -- |
You can safely remove these symlinks.
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The usual purpose is to provide a default boot - and the image used is then chosen via the redirected link.
But they aren't needed. |
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Thank you, everybody, for your quick responses.
Dynosaw |
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A master bootloader is not touched by any of the installed systems, so its menu is static until changed by the admin. Thus each vmlinuz and initrd in its menu stanzas don't need to be changed when a new kernel is installed. Only the OS with a new kernel needs changing, which some, like openSUSE, do automatically.
The concept can be applied rather simply on UEFI systems via a custom.cfg managed by the admin, and a modification of /etc/grub.d/ changing (mv) 41-custom to 07-custom, which moves the admin's custom menu to live at the top of the boot menu. |
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You can add more symlinks, eg vmlinuz-slackware, vmlinuz-suse...
I think the point is no need to update bootloader config after a kernel update, just update symlink |
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Except for a few, most distros auto run update-grub or something similar during updates for new kernels, So I create a custom menu for each partition using the grub configfile= to boot other distros with there own grub.cfg in a custom file before the osprober file in /etc/grub.d
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Thanks everybody for a very interesting
and useful discussion. I would like to close this thread out from side. Again thanks Dynosaw -- |
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