Installation guide

Chapter 4. Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 39

To add default options to the boot command, enter them into the Kernel parameters ﬁeld. Any

options you enter are passed to the Linux kernel every time it boots.

4.17.2. Rescue Mode

Rescue mode provides the ability to boot a small Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment entirely from

boot media or some other boot method instead of the system’s hard drive. There may be times when

you are unable to get Red Hat Enterprise Linux running completely enough to access ﬁles on your

system’s hard drive. Using rescue mode, you can access the ﬁles stored on your system’s hard drive,

even if you cannot actually run Red Hat Enterprise Linux from that hard drive. If you need to use

rescue mode, try the following method:

• Using the CD-ROM to boot an x86, AMD64, or Intel® EM64T system, type linux rescue at

the installation boot prompt. Itanium users should type elilo linux rescue to enter rescue

mode.

For additional information, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide.

4.17.3. Alternative Boot Loaders

If you do not wish to use a boot loader, you have several alternatives:

LOADLIN

You can load Linux from MS-DOS. Unfortunately, this requires a copy of the Linux kernel (and

an initial RAM disk, if you have a SCSI adapter) to be available on an MS-DOS partition. The

only way to accomplish this is to boot your Red Hat Enterprise Linux system using some other

method (for example, from a boot CD-ROM) and then copy the kernel to an MS-DOS partition.

LOADLIN is available from

ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/dualboot/

and associated mirror sites.

SYSLINUX

SYSLINUX is an MS-DOS program very similar to LOADLIN. It is also available from

ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/loaders/

and associated mirror sites.

Commercial boot loaders

You can load Linux using commercial boot loaders. For example, System Commander and Par-

tition Magic are able to boot Linux (but still require GRUB to be installed in your Linux root

partition).

Note

Boot loaders such as LOADLIN and System Commander are considered to be third-party boot load-

ers and are not supported by Red Hat.