Before you start to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on an Itanium, you must have a basic
understanding of the EFI Shell, what it does, and the information it can
provide.
The EFI Shell is a console interface used to launch applications (such
as the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program), load EFI protocols and device
drivers, and execute simple scripts. It is similar to a DOS console and
can only access media that is FAT16 (VFAT) formatted.
The EFI Shell also contains common utilities that can be used on the EFI
system partition. These utilities include edit,
type, cp, rm,
and mkdir. For a list of utilities and other
commands, type help at the EFI Shell prompt.
The EFI Shell contains a boot loader called ELILO. Additional
information on EFI can be found at the following URL:
The map command can be used to list all devices and
file systems that EFI can recognize. When your Itanium system boots into
the EFI shell, it probes your system in the following order:
LS-120 drive (if it contains media)
IDE hard drives on the primary IDE interface
IDE hard drives on the secondary IDE interface
SCSI hard drives on the SCSI interface
CD-ROM drives on the IDE interface
CD-ROM drives on the SCSI interface
To view the results of this system poll, type the following
command at the EFI Shell prompt:
The output is listed in the order the system was probed. So, all
FAT16 file systems are listed first, then IDE hard drives, then SCSI
hard drives, then IDE CD-ROM drives, and finally SCSI CD-ROM drives.
For example, output of the map command might look
like the following:
Device mapping table
fs0 : VenHw(Unknown Device:00)/HD(Part1,Sig00000000)
fs1 : VenHw(Unknown Device:80)/HD(Part1,Sig00000000)
fs2 : VenHw(Unknown Device:FF)/CDROM(Entry1)/HD(Part1,Sig00000000)
blk0 : VenHw(Unknown Device:00)
blk1 : VenHw(Unknown Device:00)/HD(Part1,Sig00000000)
blk2 : VenHw(Unknown Device:80)
blk3 : VenHw(Unknown Device:80)/HD(Part1,Sig00000000)
blk4 : VenHw(Unknown Device:80)/HD(Part2,Sig00000000)
blk5 : VenHw(Unknown Device:80)/HD(Part3,Sig00000000)
blk6 : VenHw(Unknown Device:80)/HD(Part3,Sig00000000)/HD(Part1,Sig725F7772)
blk7 : VenHw(Unknown Device:FF)
blk8 : VenHw(Unknown Device:FF)/CDROM(Entry1)
blk9 : VenHw(Unknown Device:FF)/CDROM(Entry1)/HD(Part1,Sig00000000) |
In this example, there is an LS-120 diskette in the LS-120 drive as
well as a CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive. All the listings beginning with
fs are FAT16 file systems that EFI can read. All
the listings beginning with blk are block devices
that EFI recognizes. Both the file systems and block devices are listed
in the order they are probed. Therefore, fs0 is
the system partition on the LS-120, fs1 is the
system partition on the hard drive, and fs2 is
the system partition on the CD-ROM.
When partitioning your hard drive for Linux, you must create a
system partition that is FAT16 (VFAT) formatted and has a mount point
of /boot/efi/. This partition contains the
installed Linux kernel(s) as well as the ELILO configuration file
(elilo.conf). The
elilo.conf file contains a list of kernels from
which you can boot your system.
