5.9 Installing LILO

The Master Boot Record (MBR)

is the recommended place to install LILO, unless the MBR already starts another operating system loader, such System Commander or OS/2's Boot Manager. The master boot record is a special area on your hard drive that is automatically loaded by your computer's BIOS, and is the earliest point at which LILO can take control of the boot process. If you install LILO in the MBR, when your machine boots, LILO will present a boot: prompt; you can then boot Red Hat Linux or any other operating system you configure LILO to boot (see below).

The first sector of your root partition

is recommended if you are already using another boot loader on your system (such as OS/2's Boot Manager). In this case, your other boot loader will take control first. You can then configure that boot loader to start LILO (which will then boot Red Hat Linux).

A dialog box will appear that will let you select the type of LILO installation you desire (see Figure 45). Select the location you wish to install LILO and press OK. If you do not wish to install LILO, press Skip.

Please Note: If you choose Skip, you will not be able to boot your Red Hat Linux system directly, and will need to use another boot method (such as a boot diskette). Use this option only if you know you have another way of booting your Red Hat Linux system!

5.9.1 Adding Options to the LILO Boot Command Line

Next, the installation program will ask if you wish to add default options to the LILO boot command (see Figure 46). Any options you enter will be passed to the Linux kernel every time it boots. When you reviewed your computer's BIOS settings in Section 2.3.1, if you found your computer accesses a hard drive in LBA mode, check Use linear mode. Select OK and press [Space] when finished.

Finally, the installation program will display a screen similar to the one in Figure 47. Every partition that may be bootable is listed, including partitions used by other operating systems. The ``Boot label'' column will be filled in with the word linux on the partition holding your Red Hat Linux system's root filesystem. Other partitions may also have boot labels. If you would like to add boot labels for other partitions (or change an existing boot label), use the arrow keys to highlight the desired partition. Then use the [Tab] key to select the Edit button, and press [Space]. You'll then see a small dialog box permitting you to enter/modify the partition's boot label. Press Ok when done.

There is also a column labeled ``Default''. Only one partition will contain an asterisk under that column. The partition marked as the default will be the partition LILO will boot if there is no user input during the boot process. Initially the root partition for your Red Hat Linux installation will be selected as the default. If you'd like to change this, use the arrow keys to highlight the partition you'd like to make the default, and press [F2]. The asterisk should move to the selected partition. When you've finished, select Ok, and press [Space].

5.9.2 Alternatives to LILO

Boot Diskette

You can use the boot diskette created by the installation program (if you elected to create one).

LOADLIN

can load Linux from MS-DOS; unfortunately, it requires a copy of the Linux kernel (and an initial ram disk, if you have a SCSI adapter) to be available on an MS-DOS partition. The only way to accomplish this is to boot your Red Hat Linux system using some other method (e.g., from LILO on a diskette) and then copy the kernel to an MS-DOS partition. LOADLIN is available from
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/dualboot/
and sunsite's various mirror sites.

SYSLINUX

is an MS-DOS program very similar to LOADLIN; it is also available from
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/dualboot/ and sunsite's
various mirror sites.

Some commercial bootloaders,

such as System Commander, are able to boot Linux (but still require LILO to be installed in your Linux root partition).