On Fri, Jun 30, 2000 at 06:58:07PM +0530, Mrinal Kalakrishnan wrote:
> Does LILO load vmlinuz at the start? Or some other smaller file first?
> Because I was wondering - when the kernel file (say 500 KB) is
> fragmented in the filesystem, how does LILO load it? In this case it
> has to understand the filesystem, isn't it? But /usr/doc/lilo/README
> clearly says:
>
> LILO does not know how to read a file system. Instead, the map
> installer asks the kernel for the physical location of files (e.g. the
> kernel image(s)) and records that information. This allows LILO to
> work with most file systems that are supported by Linux.
>
> So how does it deal with a fragmented kernel? Does linux have any way
> of ensuring that the kernel remains unfragmented?
>
Read the ps file that comes with LILO or read my past mails on the
topic. Essentially:
When you run /sbin/lilo, LILO "queries" the filesystem for a "map"
of the "vmlinuz" file. This map contains filesystem independent
disk addresses. The map is then stored in a well known location, where
the LILO code can find it.
In the meanwhile, if you do:
$ cp vmlinuz foo
$ cp foo vmlinuz
you're screwed, because the map becomes invalid. I think LILO's way of
doing things is clumsy.
-Arun
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