5.8 Installing LILO

The Master Boot Record (MBR)

is the recommended place to install LILO, unless another operating system loader (e.g., System Commander or OS/2's Boot Manager) is already installed there. When your machine boots, LILO starts and presents the boot: prompt; you can 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); then you can setup that boot loader to start LILO and boot Red Hat Linux.

A dialog box will appear that will let you select the type of LILO installation you desire (see Figure 44). 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 at your own risk!

5.8.1 Adding Options to the LILO Boot Command Line

Finally, the installation program will ask if you wish to add default options to the LILO boot command (see Figure 45). Any options you enter will be passed to the Linux kernel every time it boots. If you have an LBA drive, check Use linear mode. Select OK and press [Space] when finished.

5.8.2 Alternatives to LILO

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 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 may still require LILO to be installed in your Linux root partition).