Post-Installation MILO Setup

Console Configuration

If you dedicated the first partition of your first hard drive to a small FAT partition for booting, you can the modify the Boot Menu to have a selection to load MILO from this partition.

Add another boot selection, as described in the section called Setting up ARC for Installation for ARC and in the section called Setting up AlphaBIOS for Installation for AlphaBIOS. However, this time you should select the appropriate hard drive device. If you installed Linux to the first hard drive, the device should be:

scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)

If you are using an ARC console or the AlphaBIOS console, select the following device:

Disk 0 Partition 1

If you wish to autoboot into Linux, set the OSLOADOPTIONS variable. In the ARC and AlphaBIOS consoles, the contents of the OSLOADOPTIONS parameter are passed to MILO as a command. In order to boot Linux automatically in MILO, enter a value for OSLOADOPTIONS similar to this one:

boot sda2:/boot/vmlinuz initrd=/boot/initrd.img root=/dev/sda2

Once you have done this, booting and running Linux on an Alpha system should be very similar to doing so on an x86 system.

Boot Configuration using /etc/milo.conf

Use of a configuration file, /etc/milo.conf, can streamline booting different kernels or passing different sets of arguments to the same kernel. It is analogous to the /etc/aboot.conf file read by aboot, but is in a very different format, much more along the lines of a LILO configuration file.



milo.conf(5)					     milo.conf(5)


NAME
       /etc/milo.conf - MILO configuration file

DESCRIPTION
       MILO reads this file when it is given a boot dev: command,
       where  dev  specifies  the  device  and	partition   where
       /etc/milo.conf resides, e.g.  sda2.

       milo.conf  consists  of keyword = value statements and may
       also contain empty lines and #-style comments.  Value  may
       be enclosed in double quotes, which are necessary if value
       contains space(s).

       The file is structurally sub-divided into  a  common  part
       and  several  per-image parts.  Each per-image part starts
       with an image statement.	 Common part is	 everything  pre­
       ceding the first image statement.

COMMON PART KEYWORDS
       timeout = timeout
	      Instruct	MILO to boot the first image specified in
	      /etc/milo.conf, giving the user timeout/10  seconds
	      to  interrupt.   A  zero	value  means  the default
	      behaviour (no time limit).

       command = MILO_command
	      Execute MILO_command when /etc/milo.conf	is  read.
	      A typical example may be
			command = "set MEMORY_SIZE 224"
	      This  statement is cumulative: several commands may
	      be given, and their order will be preserved.

PER-IMAGE KEYWORDS
       image = [dev:]file
	      File is the Linux kernel image file name.	 If  dev:
	      is  omitted,  same device and partition are used as
	      those for /etc/milo.conf.

       device = dev:
	      An alternative way to specify the device where  the
	      kernel image resides.

       label = boot_label
	      The  name for this boot selection (case sensitive).

       root = root_device
	      The  name	  (in	normal	 Linux	 notation,   e.g.
	      /dev/sda5)  of the device where the root filesystem
	      should be mounted.

       append = kernel_arguments
	      Any remaining kernel arguments that you wish to  be
	      appended to the (implicit) boot command line.  Note
	      that you can,  for  example,  put	 root=root_device
	      into  kernel_arguments  instead  of  using the root
	      statement.

       command = MILO_command
	      A per-image  version  of	the  common-part  command
	      statement.   It is also cumulative and the commands
	      are  executed  just  before  booting  the	 selected
	      image.

Here is an example /etc/milo.conf file, which could work with an installation.


CLASS="COMPUTEROUTPUT">
#
# /etc/milo.conf
#
# Global parameters:
#
# timeout =