[CentOS] Installing CentOS7 boot loader into the /boot partition

[Edward Diener]

On 7/17/2014 9:01 AM, Fred Smith wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 01:05:01AM -0400, Edward Diener wrote:
>> On 7/16/2014 11:55 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
>>> On 07/16/2014 12:22 AM, Edward Diener wrote:
>>>> I did not see any way, during the CentOS7 install, to install the
>>>> CentOS7 boot loader into the /boot partition rather than to the MBR of a
>>>> drive. How does one do this in the installation of CentOS7 ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> See:
>>> https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Installation_Guide/sect-disk-partitioning-setup-x86.html
>>> and the section about selecting which disk on which to install the
>>> bootloader.  Specifically, there's a 'button' (looks more like a link in
>>> the screenshot) called "Full disk summary and bootloader" on the
>>> "Installation Destination"**screen, at the bottom.  I haven't tried this
>>> yet (but I will soon), but it would seem that by telling it the device
>>> on which /boot resides the bootloader will be installed there.
>>>
>>
>> The documentation implies that when you tell it what device the
>> bootloader resides on that it will install the bootloader in the MBR of
>> that device. Otherwise how would it know where on that device to install
>> the bootloader ?
>>
> I thought I saw a section in the Release Notes that said Anaconda will
> no longer install the boot loader in a partition, as the loader has
> grown big enough that it runs the risk of overwriting other info in
> the partition. But I could be wrong...

The grub2 boot loader is installed in a /boot partition in my Fedora 20 
installation and works properly. But I do create 1 GB boot partitions 
and maybe most people do not use as much space for their boot partition 
as I do.

How hard would it really be for grub2 to check to make sure it has 
enough space to install itself into a /boot partition ? I am a 
programmer myself and although I do not know the code/design for the 
grub2-install command I am sure such a check for /boot partition size 
cannot be that hard to do.

I finally saw some posts about how to install grub2 for CentOS7 into a 
/boot partition manually and I will do that. But the Anaconda installer 
should never have created this headache to begin with no matter what 
they say. All other Linux distros I have used, such as Suse, Mint, 
Ubuntu, Mageia etc., give the ability of installing the bootloader into 
a /boot partition even when defaulting to grub2. There is no excuse for 
this Anaconda nonsense from Fedora other than programmer egotism.

>
>> It does say that you may choose not to install a bootloader then another
>> application must boot the system. I use such another application (
>> Terabyte's BIBM ) so I will try that hoping that booting the code at the
>> beginning of the /boot partition will indeed boot CentOS7.
>>
>> All other Linux distros I have allow you to choose a /boot partition in
>> which I can install that distro's boot loader. Then I can direct my own
>> boot loader to boot into that /boot partition for a particular distro
>> after which the distro's boot menu takes over.
>