Intel S5000PAL manual Rescue Mode, Alternative Boot Loaders

Installing Red Hat* Enterprise Linux 4*

Intel® Server Board S5000PAL

2)The Force LBA32 (not normally required) option allows you to exceed the 1024 cylinder limit for the /boot/ partition. If you have a system which supports the LBA32 extension for booting operating systems above the 1024 cylinder limit, and you want to place your /boot/ partition above cylinder 1024, you should select this option.

Tip: While partitioning your hard drive, keep in mind that the BIOS in some older systems cannot access more than the first 1024 cylinders on a hard drive. If this is the case, leave enough room for the /boot Linux partition on the first 1024 cylinders of your hard drive to boot Linux. The other Linux partitions can be after cylinder 1024.

In parted, 1024 cylinders equals 528MB. For more information, refer to: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeMB504-c.html

3)To add default options to the boot command, enter them into the Kernel parameters ?eld. Any options you enter are passed to the Linux kernel every time it boots.

Rescue Mode

Rescue mode provides the ability to boot a small Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment entirely from boot media or some other boot method instead of the system’s hard drive. There may be times when you are unable to get Red Hat Enterprise Linux running completely enough to access files on your system’s hard drive. Using rescue mode, you can access the files stored on your system’s hard drive, even if you cannot actually run Red Hat Enterprise Linux from that hard drive. If you need to use rescue mode, try the following method:

∙Using the CD-ROM to boot an x86, AMD64, or Intel® EM64T system, type linux rescue at the installation boot prompt. Itanium users should type elilo linux rescue to enter rescue mode.

∙For additional information, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide.

Alternative Boot Loaders

If you do not wish to use a boot loader, you have several alternatives:

∙LOADLIN - You can load Linux from MS-DOS. Unfortunately, this requires a copy of the Linux kernel (and an initial RAM disk, if you have a SCSI adapter) to be available on an MS-DOS partition. The only way to accomplish this is to boot your Red Hat Enterprise Linux system using some other method (for example, from a boot CD-ROM) and then copy the kernel to an MS-DOS partition. LOADLIN is available from ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/dualboot/ and associated mirror sites.

∙SYSLINUX - SYSLINUX is an MS-DOS program very similar to LOADLIN. It is also available from ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/loaders/ and associated mirror sites.

37