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3. LILO configuration dialog

Now that you know a little bit what LILO can do, let see how you can configure it using Linuxconf. The main configuration dialog is split in sections. Here is an introduction to each section.

3.1 Global features

This section deal with how to install LILO.

Disabling LILO

If you boot your Linux system without LILO, you may find Linuxconf a little bit annoying as it tries to make sure LILO is properly set up all the time. You can disable LILO support from Linuxconf at any time. This only affects Linuxconf though. This does nothing else. It won't UN-install LILO. It just says to Linuxconf ``stop checking lilo''.

Install boot sector on

LILO is brought to life at boot time by running a tiny, tiny program, called the boot sector. This program must be installed in a strategic location. The pop-up list of this field offers you a list of valid choice is order of preference. If Linux is the active partition it does not matter much. If it is not, or your Linux partition is not on the first hard drive, you must install the boot sector either on the master boot record of the first drive, or on a boot floppy.

Note that installing the boot sector on a boot floppy is still pretty fast, because only one sector is read from it. All other files still lives in the Linux partition on your hard drive.

If you have another boot manager (The OS/2 boot manager for one, Partition Magic for another), then a safe choice is to install the boot sector right in the linux partition. You will have to tell your other boot manager about this new partition. The OS/2 boot manager can boot (as LILO) linux even if it is located on a second hard drive (not the primary one).

Bios boot mode

Known to boot faster. Known not to work on some machines. I have no experience with it.

Boot table encoding

LILO creates a table which lets the boot loader locate the kernel files. This encoding is either done as track/head/sector or as a linear block number. With some SCSI controllers, the first strategy does not work. If you experience this, try to use the linear mode. Most modern computers work fine when you use a linear block number.

Present the LILO prompt

With this option, LILO will show its prompt. This option is on by default

        LILO boot:
        

From there you can

At the prompt, you may select a configuration; press the TAB key to get a list of configurations. Type the label of a configuration or simply hit the <ENTER> key to select the default configuration.

If you need to pass boot-time parameters to the kernel, you will need to type the name of the configuration first, even if it is the default configuration.

Prompt timeout

Without a timeout, LILO will wait forever at the prompt. You can specify a timeout after which LILO will boot by itself the default configuration. The default timeout is 5 seconds.

Boot delay

LILO may boot right away or wait some time before presenting the boot: prompt (if it is configured to show the prompt) or booting (if it is not configured to show the prompt). During this wait, you can intercept the boot sequence by typing shift-tab; LILO will then present you with its normal boot: prompt.

If you disable the prompt, a boot delay of 5 seconds is recommended. Entering 0 disables this delay.

Message file

You must put the path of a text file. Ideally, the text will be short and will fill the screen, leaving the LILO prompt at the bottom. This is used for the boot floppies of some distributions. You can use it, for example, to give boot instructions to users in a lab or to family members who might not remember which keys to press.

3.2 Defaults

This section provides the default configuration, which Linuxconf applys to the different Linux configuration entries. Entering information here allows you to avoid entering it repeatedly later.

Root partition

You must tell where your Linux root partition is sitting. A pop-up list gives you a list of all partitions.

Ram disk size

Ram disk are used for installation boot disks. They are seldom used for full configuration. Recent development of kernel modules have made ram disk runtime configurable. A value of 0 disable the ram disk feature.

Boot mode: Read only?

Normally this flags is on. For UMSDOS installation, it is off. UMSDOS installation will generally use loadlin to boot instead of LILO anyway.

Unless you really what you're doing, then leave it on. Here is why: When Linux boots in read-only mode, it is allowed to do much inspection of the partitions without touching them at all. This is good especially if the boot follows a crash which has left the partitions in a weird state.

Why all the fuss about not touching the partition? Well, Linux support multiple time stamps per file. One is the "last access date". This means that the file system is changed (data is written to the disk) just by reading files (which is exactly what happen at boot time).

This last access time stamp is pretty useful, but becomes a nuisance at boot time. The "read only" tells Linux to drop this behavior.

After the partition has been checked, the system will set back to "read write" mode automatically.

Boot options

Some drivers required some information to correctly initialized themselves. For example, some CDROM drives do not correctly identify themselves. In order to tell Linux to consider your (rather broken) CDROM drive as a CDROM drive, you might need something like this:

        hdc=cdrom
        

This will tell Linux that the master IDE device on the second IDE interface (that is, /dev/hdc) is a CDROM device.

3.3 Linux setups

The default section is followed by several identical sections. Each defines one Linux boot configuration. Each boot configuration repeats all the parameter of the default section. You can simply override them in each section if you wish to change them.

The first configuration will be the default one. This means that LILO will boot this one unless told differently at the boot: prompt.

Only 3 fields differ from the default section.

Delete this configuration

If you check this box, the configuration will disappear when you will hit the accept button.

Kernel image file

This is the path of the kernel file which will boot for this configuration. Note that one kernel file may be used within several configurations.

Label

This is a short name uniquely identifying the configuration. Given that a kernel file may be shared by several configuration, we need a unique key. This will be used when intercepting the boot process. LILO expect simply a label name and will boot the corresponding configuration.

3.4 Other operating system

LILO is able to boot almost anything. For each OS you want to boot, simply specify the partition and a label. LILO simply load the boot sector of that partition and launch it.


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