LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Boot, Initialization, Shutdown, and Runlevels (Topic 1.106)

Objective 1: Boot the System

LILO, the Linux loader

• LILO is a utility designed to load a Linux kernel (or another operating system) into memory and launch it. It has two parts:

  The boot loader

  A two-stage program intended to find and load a kernel. The first stage resides in the disk boot sector and is started by the system BIOS. It locates and launches a second, larger stage residing elsewhere on disk.

  The lilo command

  The map installer, used to install and configure the LILO boot loader. It reads /etc/lilo.conf and writes a corresponding map file.

• The /etc/lilo.conf file contains options and kernel image information. Popular directives are:

  boot

  The name of the hard disk partition that contains the boot sector.

  image

  Refers to a specific kernel file.

  install

  The file installed as the new boot sector.

  label

  Provides a label, or name, for each image.

  map

  Directory where the map file is located.

  prompt

  Prompts the user for input (such as kernel parameters or runlevels) before booting and without a keystroke from the user.

  read-only

  The root filesystem should initially be mounted read-only.

  root

  Used following each image, this specifies the device that should be mounted as root.

  timeout

  The amount of time, in tenths of a second, the system waits for user input.

Kernel parameters and module configuration

• LILO can pass kernel parameters using name=value pairs.

• Linux kernels are modular, with portions of kernel ...