Boot loaders
The boot loader is responsible for loading the kernel and initial ramdisk before initiating the boot process. You can use different kinds of bootloaders in Arch, such as GRUB(2), Syslinux, LILO or GRUB Legacy.
This page will only contain short introduction and most used configurations users will touch. For detailed information, please see corresponding pages of each boot loader.
Contents
Configuration
Configuration files
Different boot loader use different files for configuration. Here is a short list:
- GRUB:
/boot/grub/grub.cfg
- GRUB Legacy:
/boot/grub/menu.lst
- LILO:
/etc/lilo.conf
- Syslinux:
/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
Kernel parameters
Kernel command line parameters are often supplied by the bootloader. Here we are adding the parameters quiet splash
to GRUB, GRUB Legacy, LILO and Syslinux.
GRUB
Edit the file /etc/default/grub
and append your kernel options to the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
:
/etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="ro quiet splash"
Re-generate grub.cfg
with:
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
The resulting line in /boot/grub/grub.cfg
will look like:
/boot/grub/grub.cfg
linux /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 quiet splash
GRUB Legacy
/boot/grub/menu.lst
kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 ro quiet splash
LILO
/etc/lilo.conf
image=/boot/vmlinuz-linux [...] quiet splash
Syslinux
/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
APPEND root=UUID=988d4e11-8237-4af3-5ab6-77627128g9d0 ro vga=current quiet splash