algorithm of setting BOOT_DEVICE

[Toomas Tamm]

> I'll try to fix this soon, but one of the core problems is that AFAIK the
> version in trunk and the experimental one differ in this regard. Which version
> would you be interested in?

I am using experimental.

> Would you mind explaining why you'd need to override this? The reason I'm asking
> is that if you have a case possibly relevant to others then we might want to add
> this to setup-storage.

For the same reason I was so keen on having "preserve_always:all" not
disturb the partitioning at all: I am installing Debian onto laptops
which have been strangely partitioned by the manufacturers, and further
changed by myself with gparted, and I need to make sure that the grub
ends up at a specific location, which I may want to hand-pick for each
particular machine type. 

This way I can be sure that I would not lose access to the recovery
partitions which in many cases are the primary way to revert the machine
to factory-fresh state, should anything go wrong.

> Anyway, overriding is utterly simple: Under the assumption that you use grub,
> the only point where $BOOT_DEVICE is actually used is
> files/boot/grub/menu.lst/postinst - which is part of your config space, if you
> based it on the provided simple example. And of course you are free to do
> whatever you like in this script...

I am using GRUB_PC and I think the proper place to change would be
scripts/GRUB_PC/10-setup . Right?

However, I would suggest a simple addition to provide the override: if
task_partition finds BOOT_DEVICE already assigned (eg by one of the
scripts in "class" directory), it should ignore the value generated by
setup-storage and use the user-provided value instead. Would that be
hard to implement?

Best regards,

Toomas Tamm