Making your Choice Introduction

Now that your kernel is configured and compiled and the necessary system configuration files are filled in correctly, it is time to install a program that will fire up your kernel when you start the system. Such a program is called a bootloader.

Installing the SPARC Bootloader: SILO

It is now time to install and configure SILO, the Sparc Improved boot LOader. 

# emerge --usepkg silo

Now open up your favorite editor (we use nano as an example) and create /etc/silo.conf. 

# nano -w /etc/silo.conf

Beneath you find an example silo.conf file. It uses the partitioning scheme we use throughout this book and kernel-2.4.24 as kernelimage. 

partition = 1         # Boot partition
root = /dev/hda4      # Root partition
timeout = 150          # Wait 15 seconds before booting the default section

image = /boot/kernel-2.4.24
  label = linux

If you use the example silo.conf delivered by Portage, be sure to comment out all lines that you do not need.

If you have a separate /boot partition, copy over the configuration file to /boot and run /sbin/silo: 

# cp /etc/silo.conf /boot
# /sbin/silo -C /boot/silo.conf
/boot/silo.conf appears to be valid

If your /boot directory resides on your root partition, just run /sbin/silo: 

# /sbin/silo
/etc/silo.conf appears to be valid

Now continue with Installing Necessary System Tools.