Newbie questions about booting Slackware

[Gregory Nowak]

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No, kernel image labels are not pointing to a part of lilo.conf. Think
of them as shortcuts to specifying a kernel image to boot and its
parameters. Instead of typing something like vmlinux root=/dev/ram0,
just typing ramdisk automatically tells lilo to load the kernel image
and pass it the kernel parameters specified in the ramdisk section of
lilo.conf.

As for your mount question, you're not calling any mount command. All
you're doing here is specifying the mount label to lilo, which in turn
specifies kernel parameters specific to booting a root file system off
a hard disk, as opposed to booting a file system off of a ramdisk. The
root=/dev/hda1 is really a kernel parameter called root, which tells
the kernel where to find the root file system at. The reason you have
to specify it is because the mount label doesn't specify the root
parameter, since it naturally won't know where you installed your root
file system.

Greg


On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 11:49:14AM -0700, Debee Norling wrote:
> Thank you Greg and Chuck for patiently answering my silly questions. I've
> never been one of those people who just likes to memorize commands; I want
> to know why I'm typing something!
> 
> So are Kernel image labels  pointing to some part of lilo.conf then, and is
> this why the commands vary so widely?
> 
> And how can "mount root=/hda1" work for a start command if a kernel has to
> load before there's any mount command to call?
> 
> 
> 
>        --   Debee
> (Deborah Norling)
> Alternate Media Specialist
> DeAnza College
> Phone: 408-864-5815
>        <MailTo: norlingdeborah at fhda.edu>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> 
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> 
> 

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