Re: LILO (fwd)
Ka'Plaagh (rusling@linux.reo.dec.com)
Thu, 21 Aug 1997 05:36:01 +0000
> > From: Jim Nance <jlnance@avanticorp.com>
>
> > If anyone has some spare time (do such people exist?) it would make a
> > nice project for someone to change LILO so that it operated more like
> > silo, milo, or aboot. These linux boot loaders for the sparc and alpha
> > load a second stage boot loader which can understand the file system,
> > thus you don't have to rerun LILO every time you want to boot a new kernel.
>
> I looked at "solo" (not silo), and it even deciphers ELF (though I
> suspect at a minimal level). But you still need to store sector
> references to find the second stage loader.
>
> And there's not just "the filesystem", there are several. Thus,
> either the second stage loader understands all the important ones,
> or it has to have sector links to additional modules.
>
MILO includes ext2, iso9660 and DOS.
> (I'd also like to see a bootmanager style menu, ability to
> automatically set the default to the last thing you booted, and
> stuffing of key strokes; also, IMHO, linux should do more of the work
> and the boot loaders less)
MILO does this by leaving a data structure in non-free memory which it looks
for on reboot. This structure does not last between resets.
MILO _could_ be ported to other architectures (I get approached all the time
for this) and I _have_ thought of porting it to Intel. That's as far as I
went although most of MILO is independent of Alpha (around 95%, like the
kernel).
Dave