On those rare occasions when you have to reboot your Linux system, the first thing you probably see is the terse prompt of LILO, the most common bootloader for Linux on Intel-compatible systems. Its familiar prompt LILO: is itself a diagnostic indicating the progress of the booting process.
On those rare occasions when you have to reboot your Linux system, the first thing you probably see is the terse prompt of LILO, the most common bootloader for Linux on Intel-compatible systems. Its familiar prompt LILO: is itself a diagnostic indicating the progress of the booting process.
It’s always sad to say goodbye to an old friend, but there’s a newer, more general and flexible kid on the block named GRUB, and there are lots of good reasons to switch.
LILO has done its job reliably and well for many years, but it has always had one significant drawback; whenever you replace a kernel or change the boot configuration in any non-trivial way, you must remember to reinstall LILO into the computer’s Master Boot Record.
If you forget to do this, you can end up with a system that can be booted only from a floppy disk (after which you can rerun LILO). For more information on using LILO, see the December 1999 issue (http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-12/guru_01.html).
GRUB is the GRand Unified Bootloader (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub), which was originally written by Erich Boleyn and is now part of the GNU project. As of version 7.2, Red Hat Linux installs GRUB by default (although it still offers LILO as an option for those who prefer it).
Using GRUB
GRUB is designed to be operating system-independent and more flexible than earlier bootloaders. One of its main advantages is that it can operate as a boot-time shell, providing…
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