LILO

LInux LOader

  1. installer
  2. bootstrap
Installed in the master boot record (MBR) or
as a secondary bootstrap manager in the boot sector of a partition and another bootstrap is installed in the MBR to load LILO.

Most distributions have switched to grub.

Uses BIOS to access disks .

As LILO boots it displays:

  1. L first stage boot loader has been loaded and started
  2. LI Second stage boot loader has been loaded
  3. LIL Second stage started
    If LILO stops here, it can't load the descriptor table from the map file.
    a media failure or bad disk parameters in the BIOS.
    LIL? second stage has been loaded at an incorrect address, bad disk parameters in the BIOS.
    LIL- descriptor table is corrupt, bad disk parameters in the BIOS
  4. LILO All is loaded

Files

When installing:
/etc/lilo.conf

/boot/boot.MMmm Name of backup of original boot sectors (MM=major,mm=minor Device Numbers)
Needed to un-install and restore to previous bootstrap program.

Running multiple times will NOT clobber the original bootstap!

To restore previous bootstrap:
dd if=/boot/boot.MMmm of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1
-or-
fdisk
-or-
MicroSoft fdisk /mbr

-MWrite MasterBoot Record

Example

large-memory
lba32
boot=/dev/hda
install=menu
map=/boot/map
prompt
 
default=Linux
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26

label="Linux"
root=/dev/hda2

label = windoz
table = /dev/hda1

append=""
read-only
optional

see Wikipedia

GRUB is successor.