What are the differentboot loaders available on linux and their differences please?

Revanth GC · 11-12-2008, 03:22 AM

Please help me to analyse differnt types of boot loaders on linux.

syg00 · 11-12-2008, 03:23 AM

Homework ???

Revanth GC · 11-12-2008, 03:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

Homework ???

Yep!! i have done it...GRUB / LILO but never found and satisafactory explanation and had anxiety to know if there are any more available whihc am not aware of.....thanks

pixellany · 11-12-2008, 06:56 AM

What do you get if you do a Google search using "linux boot loader"?

colucix · 11-12-2008, 07:09 AM

Loadlin.
Gag.
Syslinux.

H_TeXMeX_H · 11-12-2008, 08:30 AM

GRUB, lilo, etc. One difference I know of is that if you use lilo you should make a separate /boot partition of type ext2, otherwise lilo may not be able to boot the kernel. I think this is because it stores the exact address where the kernel is located and if the filesystem changes this, which a journaled filesystem may, it will not find it anymore. GRUB is also faster at booting than lilo from my tests.

pwc101 · 11-12-2008, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H

GRUB, lilo, etc. One difference I know of is that if you use lilo you should make a separate /boot partition of type ext2, otherwise lilo may not be able to boot the kernel. I think this is because it stores the exact address where the kernel is located and if the filesystem changes this, which a journaled filesystem may, it will not find it anymore. GRUB is also faster at booting than lilo from my tests.

I've never had problems booting my Slackware systems using lilo without a separate /boot parition. In fact, my current set up uses XFS and /boot is a directory in /.

The one major thing grub can do that lilo can't, as far as I'm aware, is grub can download OS images over a network and boot from those. Source: http://www.enterprisenetworkingplane...le.php/3340051

monsm · 11-12-2008, 09:00 AM

Lilo is the older of the two which traditionalists swear by. Simple and effective.
Grub is the newer. It has more fancy things like nice boot splash screens which I think Lilo doesn't support. Lilo might also have more problem with booting external USB pen drives (and other things like the previous post indicates).

Grub and Lilo is basically the only two. Not heard of any other ones. People like IBM might have their own specialised things, but only these two are used by the wider community.

Mons