LILO / Grub

marrakesh

Opinions on which to choose.. Is grub just chosen as it works on specific hardware or what is the main differences..?

thx..

Typedef

grub aims to be able to boot bsd, gnu hurd, Linux.

Lilo, will at best point to another OS's partition and let whatever bootloader then do it's thang, so unless you have a reason to use the grub... like that dead sexy choose your os prompt...
Lilo is probably easier for most to set up out of the jar



<wot ho old chap>

niallb

When they're working OK, it's just whichever you prefer.
When something goes wrong, lilo will just sit there...

grub can read partitions, so you can go and look for
another kernel image, or boot a partition that you
don't have a menu item for.

This is most useful if you've installed a new kernel
and spelt it's name wrong or moved it.
Or, you've changed your kernel and forgotten to run 'lilo'.
grub doesn't need to be rerun when you change it's menu list.

lilo will try and boot from the last known location of the kernel image,
grub will look for the file and boot from it.
If you need to look for it, it's even got TAB completion.

Finally, grub can do a network boot, which is a lifesaver
if you've a machine with no floppy or cdrom.

NiallB

eggshapedfred

also Grub seems to handle dual-boots better. If you've already got windows (xp/blah) installed and you install linux, then sticking Grub in the MBR is the easiest way (i've found) of getting both systems to boot (obviously not simultaneously). With Lilo I had to fiddle around with 'dd blah-de-blah' and then copy bootsect.lnx to C:\ and add stuff in to boot.ini in windows. its nice to have it all set up for you at the beginning.

(maybe i installed lilo wrong......)

cravian

May / May not be entirely relevant, but I run a Gentoo installation and was advised to use lilo rather than grub because of potential problems with my nvidia graphics card.

Something to do with using low memory and grub getting into conflicts with an on board graphics card.

See here
here

Dalamar

LILO boots almost anything.

Just ensure that the siad operating system has it's own bootstrap loader or similar.

I've used LILO to boot win98 on a slave disk, Linux, FreeBSD, and Win 2k.

theciscokid

lilo is better i think,

bit messy trying to take grub off the system!

Red Alert

Yeah GRUB is probably the best if you know what you're doing - i was thinking of using it to network boot my 'extra' PC to be an MP3 player or an X-Terminal as needed.