You are asked to adjust the boot menu on an old system that still runs GRUB Legacy. Which file holds its menu entries?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 102. Linux installation and package management easy
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct /boot/grub/menu.lst
Correct. GRUB Legacy reads /boot/grub/menu.lst; Red Hat derivatives named the same file grub.conf and shipped menu.lst as a symbolic link to it.
Not correct /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Wrong. grub.cfg belongs to GRUB 2, and it is generated rather than edited.
Not correct /etc/default/grub
Wrong. That is the GRUB 2 settings file whose variables feed grub-mkconfig; GRUB Legacy has no such file.
Not correct /etc/grub.d/40_custom
Wrong. /etc/grub.d holds the generator scripts used by GRUB 2, again with no counterpart in GRUB Legacy.
Why
The two generations of GRUB are told apart by their files. GRUB Legacy is configured by hand in a single file, /boot/grub/menu.lst (grub.conf on Red Hat), which is read directly at boot. GRUB 2 splits the job: an administrator edits /etc/default/grub and the scripts in /etc/grub.d, and grub-mkconfig assembles /boot/grub/grub.cfg from them.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 102.2
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 102 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
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- You are laying out storage for a general-purpose Linux server. Which TWO of the following are genuine reasons to use LVM for the data filesystems rather than plain partitions? machine-checked
- Which file is the configuration file that GRUB 2 generates, and which administrators are told not to edit by hand on a typical Linux distribution? machine-checked
- You replaced the boot disk in a BIOS/MBR system and need to write the GRUB 2 boot loader into the master boot record of /dev/sda, installing the required GRUB modules under /boot. Which command does that? machine-checked
- On a GRUB 2 system whose configuration file is /boot/grub/grub.cfg, type the grub-mkconfig command — including the option and its argument — that regenerates that file. machine-checked