The SPARC Improved bootLOader (SILO) is the bootloader used by the
SPARC port of the
Linux operating system;
it can also be used for
Solaris
Solaris may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film
* ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem
** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg
** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...
as a replacement for the standard Solaris boot loader.
SILO generally looks similar to the basic version of
LILO, giving a "boot:" prompt, at which the user can press the
Tab key
The tab key (abbreviation of tabulator key or tabular key) on a keyboard is used to advance the cursor to the next tab stop.
History
The word ''tab'' derives from the word ''tabulate'', which means "to arrange data in a tabular, or table, fo ...
to see the available images to boot. The configuration file format is reasonably similar to LILO's, as well as some of the command-line options. However, SILO differs significantly from LILO because it reads and parses the configuration file at boot time, so it is not necessary to re-run it after every change to the file or to the installed kernel images. SILO is able to access
ext2,
ext3,
ext4,
UFS,
romfs
In computing, romfs (ROM filesystem) is an extremely simple file system lacking many features, intended for burning important files onto an EEPROM
EEPROM (also called E2PROM) stands for electrically erasable programmable read-only memo ...
and
ISO 9660 file systems, enabling it to boot arbitrary kernels from them (more similar to
GRUB
Grub can refer to Grub (larva), of the beetle superfamily Scarabaeoidea, or as a slang term for food. It can also refer to:
Places
* Grub, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzerland
* Grub, St. Gallen, Switzerland
* Grub (Amerang), a hamlet in Bavaria, ...
).
SILO also has support for transparent decompression of gzipped
vmlinux images, making the
bzImage format unnecessary on SPARC Linux.
SILO is loaded from the SPARC
PROM.
Licensed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License (GPL).
See also
*
bootman
BootManager, formerly known as BootMan, is the Haiku and BeOS boot loader on x86 systems. It resides solely in the master boot record and does not require installing Haiku or BeOS, although it must be installed from Haiku or BeOS. Its BeOS prede ...
*
LILO
*
elilo
LILO (Linux Loader) is a boot loader for Linux and was the default boot loader for most Linux distributions in the years after the popularity of loadlin. Today, many distributions use GRUB as the default boot loader, but LILO and its variant ELI ...
*
Yaboot
*
NTLDR
NTLDR (abbreviation of ''NT loader'') is the boot loader for all releases of Windows NT operating system from 1993 with the release of Windows NT 3.1 up until Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. From Windows Vista onwards it was replaced by the BOO ...
*
BCD
References
External links
*
Gentoo wiki about SILO Free boot loaders
SPARC microprocessor architecture
{{Linux-stub