This section describes how to boot your Itanium into Red Hat Enterprise Linux and how to
set your EFI console variables so that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is automatically booted when
the machine is powered on.
After you reboot your system at the end of the installation program,
type the following command to boot into Red Hat Enterprise Linux:
After you type elilo, the default kernel listed in
the /boot/efi/elilo.conf configuration file is
loaded. (The first kernel listed in the file is the default.)
If you want to load a different kernel, type the label name of the
kernel from the file /boot/efi/elilo.conf
after the elilo command. For example, to load the kernel named
linux, type:
If you do not know the names of the installed kernels, you can view the
/boot/efi/elilo.conf file in EFI with the following
instructions:
At the Shell> prompt, change devices to the
system partition (mounted as /boot/efi in
Linux). For example, if fs0 is the system boot
partition, type fs0: at the EFI Shell prompt.
Type ls at the fs0:\> to make
sure you are in the correct partition.
Then type:
This command displays the contents of the configuration file. Each
stanza contains a line beginning with
label followed by a label name for that
kernel. The label name is what you type after elilo
to boot the different kernels.
In addition to specifying a kernel to load, you can also enter other
boot options such as single for single user mode or
mem=1024M to force Red Hat Enterprise Linux to use 1024 MB of
memory. To pass options to the boot loader, enter the following at the EFI
Shell prompt (replace
linux with the label
name of the kernel you want to boot and
option with the boot
options you want to pass to the kernel):
After installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux you can type elilo and
any boot options at the EFI Shell prompt each time you wish to boot your
Itanium system. However, if you wish to configure your system to boot into
Red Hat Enterprise Linux automatically, you need to configure the EFI Boot
Manager.
To configure the EFI Boot Manager (may vary
slightly depending on your hardware):
Boot the Itanium system and choose from the EFI Boot
Manager menu.
Choose from the Main
Menu.
Select the system partition that is mounted as
/boot/efi/ in Linux.
Select the elilo.efi file.
At the Enter New Description: prompt, type
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or any name that you want to
appear on the EFI Boot Manager menu.
At the Enter Boot Option Data Type: prompt, enter
N for
if you do not want to pass options to the ELILO boot loader. This
option works for most cases. If you want to pass options to the
boot loader, you can configure it in the
/boot/efi/elilo.conf configuration file instead.
Answer Yes to the Save
changes to NVRAM prompt. This returns you to the
EFI Boot Maintenance Manager menu.
Next, you want to make the menu item the default. A list of boot
options appears. Move the menu
item up to the top of the list by selecting it with the arrow keys
and pressing the [u] key to move it up the list. You
can move items down the list by selecting it and pressing the
[d] key. After changing the boot order, choose
. Choose
to return to the Main Menu.
Optionally, you can change to boot timeout value by choosing
=> from the Main Menu.
Return to the EFI Boot Manager by
selecting .
It is recommended that you configure the ELILO Boot Manager to boot
Red Hat Enterprise Linux automatically. However, if you require additional commands to be
executed before starting the ELILO boot loader, you can create a startup
script named startup.nsh. The last command should
be elilo to boot into Linux.
The startup.nsh script should be in the
/boot/efi partition
(/boot/efi/startup.nsh) and contain the following
text:
echo -off
your set of commands
elilo |
If you want to pass options to the boot loader (refer to Section 4.28.1 Post-Installation Boot Loader Options) add them after
elilo.
You can either create this file after booting into Red Hat Enterprise Linux or use the
editor built into the EFI shell. To use the EFI shell, at the
Shell> prompt, change devices to the system partition
(mounted as /boot/efi in Linux). For example, if
fs0 is the system boot partition, type
fs0: at the EFI Shell prompt. Type
ls to make sure you are in the correct
partition. Then type edit startup.nsh. Type the
contents of the file and save it.
The next time the system boots, EFI detects the
startup.nsh file and use it to boot the system. To
stop EFI from loading the file, type [Ctrl]-[c]. This aborts the process, and
returns you to the EFI shell prompt.
