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This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition
Copyright © 2006 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 4
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, although you can actually boot more than
two.
Once your Linux system is installed, rebooting the system is generally straightfor-
ward. But with the wide variety of hardware and software in use, there are many
possibilities for configuring your boot process. The most common choices are:
• Boot Linux from a floppy or bootable CD, leaving any other operating sys-
tem to boot from the hard drive.
• Use the Linux Loader, LILO.
*
This is the traditional method of booting and
lets you boot both Linux and other operating systems.
• Use the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB), the GNU graphical boot loader
and command shell. Like LILO, GRUB lets you boot both Linux and other
operating systems. For now, GRUB runs only on i386-based 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
here. We also won’t talk further about booting ...