What is LILO?

[KapilAsdhir]

What is LILO?

[KapilAsdhir]

LILO stands for Linux boot loader. It will load the MBR, master boot record, into the memory, and tell the system which partition and hard drive to boot from.

[colbertfenton]

LILO is a boot loader for the Linux operating system. Most new computers are involved in a number of startup programs for Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. If your computer is to use a special Linux boot loader is installed. LILO is the most popular among users who use Linux operating system as the main or only one.

[royking]

The LILO can be placed either in the master boot record (MBR). In other case something else must be placed in the MBR to load LILO. LILO is default boot loader for most Linux distributions. Now a days most distributions use GRUB as the default boot loader.

[pottingclark]

The development of LILO as classic bootloader for GNU/Linux systems was restarted in June 2010. Because of the simpleness LILO has some advantages comparing with Grub and Grub2. But nowadays LILO is not the bootloader for all situations. But LILO is longtime proved and stable.

[Saranya]

I have much interest in this field.. Can anyone explain it briefly.. I want more information about it.. thanks for this advanced information..

[nobita_deptrai]

LILO does not depend on a specific file system, and can boot an operating system (e.g., Linux kernel images) from floppy disks and hard disks. One of up to sixteen different images can be selected at boot time. Various parameters, such as the root device, can be set independently for each kernel. LILO can be placed either in the master boot record (MBR) or the boot sector of a partition. In the latter case something else must be placed in the MBR to load LILO.

At system start, only the BIOS drivers are available for LILO to access hard disks. For this reason, with very old BIOS, the accessible area is limited to cylinders 0 to 1023 of the first two hard disks. For later BIOS, LILO can use 32-bit "logical block addressing" (LBA) to access practically the entire storage of all the hard disks that the BIOS allows access to.

LILO was the default boot loader for most Linux distributions in the years after the popularity of loadlin. Today, most distributions use GRUB as the default boot loader.