Why does Slackware use LILO?
 

Hey there,

Just wondering if there was any special reason as to why Slackware still uses Lilo?

In any case, I found GRUB on the /extras, is there an option to install GRUB instead of lilo on the install?

Thanks for reading.

I would imagine it's because Pat likes LILO. You will need to remove LILO to install GRUB. Have a boot floppy ready!

I still use LILO by choice myself. I have no need for any of the features of GRUB and when I started with Linux, I used LILO, so I've just stuck with it. Likewise, many see Pat as old school, and that could explain his attraction to the simplicity of the time-tested LILO.

Lilo is just as feature rich as grub, so many people still like it. The only thing I dislike is having to run /sbin/lilo each time I change the config file or upgrade a kernel.

GRUB is just as feature rich as lilo, so many people still like it. :)

Actually, IIRC, I migrated to GRUB rather quickly several years ago when I realized at that time (I don't know if this still applies to more recent versions) that LILO limits the length of the menu strings. With GRUB I could create longer non-cryptic human readable descriptions for my menu options. Additionally, I did not have to re-run LILO every time I modified my menu, which many people tend to forget.

Thankfully, with GRUB none of this is necessary.

No, sadly, installing GRUB is another manual exercise. Fortunately, installing is a straightforward process.

1. cd /extras
2. installpkg grub*.tgz
3. grub-install /dev/hda
4. edit /boot/grub/menu.lst as necessary

This will install GRUB to the hard drive's MBR. If you are multi-booting with a Windows OS, then be sure to add a menu option so GRUB will pass (chainload) the boot sequence to the Windows boot loader.

Do not reboot until after editing menu.lst. :)

To create an emergency GRUB boot floppy (handy once every blue moon):

grub-install /dev/fd0

Notes: 1) grub-install is one "word" 2) the "lst" extension in menu.lst uses an alphabetic ell, not a numeric one.

Here is part of my menu.lst:

timeout 3
#color black/cyan yellow/cyan
color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
i18n (hd0,12)/grub/messages
keytable (hd0,12)/us.klt
altconfigfile (hd0,12)/grub/menu.once
#password SOME_PASSWORD
default 0

title NT4-Primary
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

title Slackware 10.1 - 2.4.28 - KDE 3.3.2
kernel (hd0,12)/vmlinuz-ide-2.4.28 root=/dev/hda23 ro hdc=ide-scsi vga=3 ide2=noprobe quiet

title Slackware 10.1 - 2.4.28 - Init 3
kernel (hd0,12)/vmlinuz-ide-2.4.28 root=/dev/hda23 ro init 3 hdc=ide-scsi vga=3 ide2=noprobe quiet

title Floppy
root (fd0)
chainloader +1

That last entry is kind of handy too because I can disable floppy booting in the BIOS and still boot from floppy using GRUB.

Lastly, bear in mind that GRUB counts everything starting with zero. Thus, (hd0,1) points to the first hard drive (/dev/hda) and the second partition; (hd0,12) points to /dev/hda, 13th partition.

I hope this helps.

Grub's insistence on using a different naming scheme is quite annoying, IMHO. Especially in a mixed PATA/SATA environment. Admittedly, the longer names for boot options would be a nice feature.

Cool, thanks for the replies everyone, especially Woodsman--that's great :D

Therein lies the problem. My kernel got corrupted, and I could flip back to the backup kernel because I couldn't chroot /sbin/lilo.

Chroot /sbin/lilo? You should chroot /mnt/rootpartition and then just run /sbin/lilo. Or even 'chroot /mnt/rootpartition /sbin/lilo'. Obviously, /mnt/rootpartition should be where you have mounted your root partition. :)

I like Lilo, although I also get annoyed with the naming limitations.
I have played around with making a bootsplash for it, which is not very complicated - I like that. It can become very nice to look at with very little hassle.

I've found no problems with Lilo. Simple, and it works.

Lilo
 

I like LILO. So far I don't have any reasons to stop using it. I'm happy with it.

I even made custom bootsplashs, one with a Toshiba logo and another one with my family's escudo de armas. It's great!

:)

Myself, I think it's much easier to simply remove the lilo package, install the grub one from /extras and then run grubconfig, which is just like the installer that was used for lilo during the install, but for grub instead. It found all my disks (Slack, FreeBSD, Ubuntu and Windoze).