August 2000
Intermediate to advanced
816 pages
29h 45m
English
book
Linux in a Nutshell, Third Edition
by Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, Jessica P. Hekman, Stephen Figgins
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Chapter 4. Boot Methods
This chapter describes some techniques for booting your Linux system. Depending on your hardware and whether you want to run any other operating systems, you can configure the system to boot Linux automatically or to provide a choice between several operating systems. Choosing between operating systems is generally referred to as dual booting, but you can boot more than two (e.g., Linux and Windows 95/98/NT/2000). This chapter covers the following topics:
The boot process
LILO: the Linux loader
Loadlin: booting from MS-DOS
Dual booting Linux and Windows NT/2000
Boot-time kernel options
initrd: using a RAM disk
The Boot Process
Once your Linux system is up and running, booting the system generally is pretty straightforward. But with the wide variety of hardware and software in use, there are many possibilities for configuring your boot process. The three most common choices are:
Boot Linux from a floppy, leaving any other operating system to boot from the hard drive.
Use the Linux Loader, LILO.[2] This is probably the most common method of booting and lets you boot both Linux and other operating systems.
Run Loadlin, which is an MS-DOS program that boots Linux from within DOS.
Other boot managers that can load Linux are available, but we don’t discuss them in this chapter. We also won’t talk further about booting from a floppy except to say that whatever method you choose for booting, you should be sure to have a working boot floppy available for emergency use. In ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.