LILO is a collection of several programs and other files.
The map installer
is the program you run under Linux to put all
files belonging to LILO at the appropriate places and to record information
about the location of data needed at boot time. This program normally
resides in /sbin/lilo. It has to be run to refresh that information
whenever any part of the system that LILO knows about changes, e.g.
after installing a new kernel.
Various files
contain data LILO needs at boot time, e.g. the boot
loader. Those files normally reside in /boot. The most important files
are the boot loader (see below) and the map file (/boot/map), where
the map installer records the location of the kernel(s).[*]
Another important file is the configuration file, which is normally
called /etc/lilo.conf
The boot loader
is the part of LILO that is loaded by the BIOS
and that loads kernels or the boot sectors of other operating systems.
It also provides a simple command-line interface to interactively
select the item to boot and to add boot options.
LILO
primarily accesses the following parts of the system:
The root file system partition
is important for two reasons:
first, LILO sometimes has to tell the kernel where to look for it.
Second, it is frequently a convenient place for many other items LILO
uses, such as the boot sector, the /boot directory, and the kernels.
The boot sector
contains the first part of LILO's boot loader.
It loads the much larger second-stage loader. Both loaders are typically
stored in the file /boot/boot.b
The kernel
is loaded and started by the boot loader. Kernels typically
reside in the root directory or in /boot.
