Running Linux, Third Edition

Appendix G. LILO Boot Options

The most popular way to boot Linux on Intel platforms is the LInux LOader, LILO, whose configuration and use are described in Section 5.2.2 in Chapter 5. This appendix summarizes the options you can specify in the /etc/lilo.conf file and on the /sbin/lilo command line.

The configuration file starts with a section of global options, described in the next section. Global options are those that apply to every system boot, regardless of what operating system you are booting.

Following the global section, there is one section of options for each Linux kernel. While the variety of kernel options—many of them hardware specific—make it unfeasible to list them all here, Section G.3 later in this chapter describes the most common ones.

Finally, the configuration file contains a section for each non-Linux operating system that you want LILO to be able to boot. Each of those sections is referred to as an image section, because each boots a different kernel image (shorthand for a binary file containing a kernel) or another operating system. Each Linux image section begins with an image= line. Options found in these sections are described in Section G.2 later in this chapter.

Global Options

In addition to the options listed here, the kernel options append, read-only, read-write, root, and vga (described in Section G.3 later) can also be set as global options:

backup= backup-file

Copies the original boot sector to backup-file instead of to the file /boot/boot.nnnn ...