_WARNING:_ De-fragmenting such a DOS partition is likely to make Linux or even the whole system unbootable. Therefore, the DOS partition should either not be de-fragmented, or a Linux boot disk should be prepared (and tested) to bring up Linux and to run /sbin/lilo after the de-fragmentation.*  *  Setting the "system" attribute from DOS on the critical files (e.g.     everything in C:\LINUX) may help to protect them from being rearranged.     However, the boot floppy should still be ready, just in case.The boot prompt===============Immediately after it's loaded, LILO checks whether one of the following is happening:  - any of the [Shift], [Control] or [Alt] keys is pressed.   - [CapsLock] or [ScrollLock] is set. If this is the case, LILO displays the boot: prompt and waits for the name of a boot image (i.e. Linux kernel or other operating system). Otherwise, it boots the default boot image* or - if a delay has been specified - waits for one of the listed activities until that amount of time has passed.  *  The default boot image is either the first boot image, the image     specified with the DEFAULT variable, or the image that has been     selected at the boot prompt.At the boot prompt, the name of the image to boot can be entered. Typing errors can be corrected with [BackSpace], [Delete], [Ctrl U] and [Ctrl X]. A list of known images can be obtained by pressing [?] or [Tab].If [Enter] is pressed and no file name has been entered, the default image is booted.Boot command-line options-------------------------LILO is also able to pass command-line options to the kernel. Command-line options are words that follow the name of the boot image and that are separated by spaces.Example:boot: linux single root=200This document only gives an overview of boot options. Please consult Paul Gortmaker's BootPrompt-HOWTO for a more complete and more up to date list. You can get it from ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO.gz or from one of the many mirror sites.Standard options- - - - - - - -Recent kernels recognize a large number of options, among them are  debug ,  no387 ,  no-hlt ,  ramdisk=<size> ,  reserve=<base>,<size>,... ,  root=<device> ,  ro , and  rw . All current init programs also recognize the option  single . The options  lock  and  vga  are processed by the boot loader itself. Boot command-line options are always case-sensitive. single  boots the system in single-user mode. This bypasses most system initialization procedures and directly starts a root shell on the console. Multi-user mode can typically be entered by exiting the single-user shell or by rebooting. root=<device>  changes the root device. This overrides settings that may have been made in the boot image and on the LILO command line. <device> is either the hexadecimal device number or the full path name of the device, e.g. /dev/hda3.*  *  The device names are hard-coded in the kernel. Therefore, only the     "standard" names are supported and some less common devices may not be     recognized. In those cases, only numbers can be used. reserve=<base>,<size>,...  reserves IO port regions. This can be used to prevent device drivers from auto-probing addresses where other devices are located, which get confused by the probing. ro  instructs the kernel to mount the root file system read-only.  rw  mounts it read-write. If neither  ro  nor  rw  is specified, the setting from the boot image is used. no-hlt  avoids executing a  HLT  instructions whenever the system is idle.  HLT  normally significantly reduces power consumption and therefore also heat dissipation of the CPU, but may not work properly with some clone CPUs.  no387  disables using the hardware FPU even if one is present. debug  enables more verbose console logging.Recent kernels also accept the options  init=<name>  and  noinitrd .  init  specifies the name of the init program to execute. Therefore, if single mode cannot be entered because init is mis-configured, one may still be able to reach a shell using init=/bin/sh.  noinitrd  disables automatic loading of the initial RAM disk. Instead, its content is then available on /dev/initrd. vga=<mode>  alters the VGA mode set at startup. The values  normal ,  extended ,  ask  or a decimal number are recognized. (See also "Booting kernel images from a file".) kbd=<code>,...  preloads a sequence of keystrokes in the BIOS keyboard buffer. The keystrokes have to be entered as 16 bit hexadecimal numbers, with the upper byte containing the scan code and the lower byte containing the ASCII code. Note that most programs only use the ASCII code, so the scan code can frequently be omitted. Scan code tables can be found in many books on PC hardware. Note that scan codes depend on the keyboard layout.Finally,  lock  stores the current command-line as the default command-line, so that LILO boots the same image with the same options (including  lock ) when invoked the next time.Device-specific options- - - - - - - - - - - -There is also a plethora of options to specify certain characteristics (e.g. IO and memory addresses) of devices. Some common ones are  ether ,  floppy ,  hd ,  bmouse , and  sound . The usage of these options is  <option>=<number>,... . Please consult the corresponding FAQs and HOWTOs for details. For an overview of all available options, consult the file init/main.c in the kernel source tree.Other options- - - - - - -Options of the type  <variable>=<value>  which are neither standard options nor device-specific options, cause the respective variables to be set in the environment passed to init. The case of the variable name is preserved, i.e. it isn't automatically converted to upper case.Note that environment variables passed to init are typically available in system initialization scripts (e.g. /etc/rc.local), but they're not visible from ordinary login sessions, because the login program removes them from the user's environment.Repeating options- - - - - - - - -The effect of repeating boot command-line options depends on the options.* There are three possible behaviours:  *  Options are frequently repeated when a string defined with APPEND or     LITERAL is prepended to the parameters typed in by the user. Also, LILO     implicitly prepends the options  ramdisk ,  ro ,  root , or  rw  when     RAMDISK, READ-ONLY, READ-WRITE, or ROOT, respectively, are set in the     configuration file. ( lock  and  vga  are handled by a different     internal mechanism.)Options that only enable or disable a certain functionality can be repeated any number of times.  debug ,  lock ,  no-hlt , and  no387  fall into this category.Other options change a global setting whenever they appear, so only the value or presence of the last option matters. The antagonists  ro  and  rw  are such options. Also,  ramdisk ,  root , and  vga  work this way. Example:  ro rw  would mount the root file system read-write.Finally, when  reserve  and many device-specific options are repeated, each occurrence has its own meaning, e.g.  hd=... hd=...  would configure two hard disks, and  reserve=0x300,8 reserve=0x5f0,16  would reserve the ranges 0x300 to 0x307 and 0x5f0 to 0x5ff (which is equivalent to writing  reserve=0x300,8,0x5f0,16 ).Implicit options- - - - - - - -LILO always passes the string  BOOT_IMAGE=<name>  to the kernel, where <name> is the name by which the kernel is identified (e.g. the label). This variable can be used in /etc/rc to select a different behaviour, depending on the kernel.When booting automatically, i.e. without human intervention, the word  auto  is also passed on the command line. This can be used by init to suppress interactive prompts in the boot phase.Boot image selection--------------------The details of selecting the boot image are somewhat complicated. The following tables illustrate them. First, if neither PROMPT is set nor a shift key is being pressed:Externally  Command   |  Auto-  Booted image              provided   line in   |  matic                           cmd. line* map file** | boot***                          ---------------------------------------------------------    No         No     |   Yes   Default image               Yes         -      |   Yes   Specified by external                          |         command line                 No        Yes     |   Yes   Specified by command line                      |         in map file                       *  Externally provided command lines could be used to add front-ends to     LILO. They would pass the respective command string to LILO, which     would then interpret it like keyboard input. This feature is currently     not used.  **  This command line is set by invoking the map installer with the  -R      option, by using the boot command-line option  lock , or if a fallback     command line is set (with FALLBACK).  ***  I.e. the keyword  auto  is added.If PROMPT is not set and a shift key is being pressed: Input  Empty  Extern. Cmd.l. | Auto- Booted image         timeout cmd.l. cmd.l.  in map | matic                                              file  | boot                       -----------------------------------------------------------  No      No      -      -    |  No   Specified by the user  No     Yes      -      -    |  No   Default image          Yes    n/a      -      -    |  Yes  Default image        Finally, if the configuration variable PROMPT is set: Input  Empty  Extern. Cmd.l. | Auto- Booted image         timeout cmd.l. cmd.l.  in map | matic                                              file  | boot                       -----------------------------------------------------------  No      No     No      No   |  No   Specified by the user  No     Yes     No      No   |  No   Default image          Yes    n/a     No      No   |  Yes  Default image          n/a    n/a     Yes     -    |  Yes  Specified by external                              |       command line           n/a    n/a     No     Yes   |  Yes  Specified by command                               |       line in map file     Note that LILO pauses for the amount of time specified in DELAY when at the end of a default command line. The automatic boot can then be interrupted by pressing a modifier key ([Shift], [Ctrl], etc.).The default image is the first image in the map file or the image specified with the DEFAULT variable. However, after an unsuccessful boot attempt, the respective image becomes the default image.Map installer=============The map installer program /sbin/lilo updates the boot sector and creates the map file. If the map installer detects an error, it terminates immediately and does not touch the boot sector and the map file.Whenever the map installer updates a boot sector, the original boot sector is copied to /boot/boot.<number>, where <number> is the hexadecimal device number. If such a file already exists, no backup copy is made. Similarly, a file  /boot/part.<number>  is created if LILO modifies the partition table. (See "General per-image options".)Command-line options--------------------The LILO map installer can be invoked in the following ways:Show current installation- - - - - - - - - - - - -The currently mapped files are listed. With  -v , also many parameters are shown.  /sbin/lilo [ -C <config_file> ] -q [ -m <map_file> ] [ -v ... ]     -C <config_file>         Specifies the configuration file that is used by the map installer     (see section "Configuration"). If  -C  is omitted, /etc/lilo.conf is     used.    -m <map_file>         Specifies an alternate map file. See also sections "Options     corresponding to configuration variables" and "Global options".    -q         Lists the currently mapped files.    -v ...         Increase verbosity. See also sections "Options corresponding to     configuration variables" and "Global options". Create or update map- - - - - - - - - -A new map is created for the images described in the configuration file /etc/lilo.conf and they are registered in the boot sector.  /sbin/lilo [ -C <config_file> ] [ -b <boot_device> ] [ -c ] [ -l ] [ -i     <boot_sector> ] [ -f <disk_tab> ] [ -m <map_file> ] [ -d <delay> ] [ -v     ... ] [ -t ] [ -s <save_file> | -S <save_file> ] [ -P fix | -P ignore ]     [ -r <root_dir> ]