Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed

Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed

By William Ball

Chapter 3. LILO and Other Boot Managers

In This Chapter

There are many different ways to boot Linux. You can boot Linux from a floppy disk, directly from CD-ROM, via a network, or most commonly, from a specific partition on an installed hard drive. In each case, booting Linux requires an installed program to load the kernel into your computer's memory. This program is known as a bootloader, and you'll find at least two different free bootloaders included with this book's CD-ROMs.

Which bootloader you'll use depends on the version of Red Hat Linux and the computer you're using: LILO is for Intel-compatible PCs, MILO is for Compaq and other Alpha PCs, and SILO is used with SPARC-compatible workstations. Because the CD-ROMs included with this book contain Red Hat Intel/Linux, this chapter focuses on LILO, which—according to its author, Werner Almesberger—stands for Linux Loader, and Hans Lermen's LOADLIN.EXE loader. Instead of using LILO, you can start Linux from DOS with LOADLIN.EXE, which is included on the first CD-ROM under the dosutils directory. See the section Using LOADLIN.EXE to Boot Linux later in this chapter. You'll also learn about a commercial bootloader from PowerQuest, named BootMagic.

Alternative Loaders

There are even more commercial bootloaders you can use to boot Linux. Another alternative is V Communications, Incorporated's System Commander, which can come in handy if you need to boot 100 or more operating systems, such as OS/2, BeOS, Solaris, or Windows 2000, on your computer. This product also includes point-and-click partitioning. Browse to http://www.v-com.com for more details.

There are other free-software bootloaders you can try. These include GNU GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader), found at http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html, and Tuomo Valkonen's Choose-OS bootloader, available through most popular Linux FTP sites, or at http://www.kac.poliod.hu/doc/chos/.

This chapter will help if you chose not to install LILO when you first installed Red Hat Linux, if you need help properly starting Linux with certain kernel options, or if you need help troubleshooting a problematic boot. You should already know how you want to start Linux on your computer, but the information here can show you alternative ways to install and start Linux.

You can also use your computer as a diskless workstation by booting Linux over a network. A discussion on this subject is beyond the scope of this chapter, but you'll find the details on how to do this in Robert Nemkin's Diskless-HOWTO, available through http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html. One newer Ethernet bootloader you can try is EtherBoot, available through http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/.

NOTE

Unlike previous editions, you won't find HOWTOs included on this book's Red Hat CD-ROMs. Browse to http://www.linuxdoc.org to search for and read HOWTOs.

 

Share ThisShare This

Informit Network