Information about the simple chooser -------------------------------------- Copyright (C) 2002-2003 Hewlett-Packard Co. Contributed by Stephane Eranian Last updated: 02/02/14 Chooser name: simple Command line option: -C simple Config file option: chooser=simple, description, message The simple chooser is the default chooser. However it is possible to disable it at compile time, it is highly recommended to keep it in. Elilo must have at least one chooser compiled in. The simple chooser is very basic as its name indicates! It provides a simple one line text mode command prompt similar to what you get with Lilo/x86. Any chooser becomes visible to the user ONLY when the interactive mode is entered. The simple chooser allows the user to select a kernel to boot. The user can use a label as specified in the elilo config file or a kernel file name. File names can be specified with absolute names in the form dev_name:/path/to/my_kernel. 1/ Activation The chooser is activated from: - command line with the -c simple - the config file with the chooser=simple option 2/ Supported options The simple chooser supports the following options in the config file: message=filename : display a message before the prompt. The filename must be an ASCII file description=string: a description of the kernel image (ASCII) All other options have their standard meaning. The chooser does not recognize the fX (X varies from 1-12) options 2/ Builtin commands The simple chooser has some builtin command which the user can get to by typing certain keys as the first character on the command line: TAB: shows the list of defined labels and their descriptions. If the user did not type anything, i.e., the line is empty, pressing TAB will print the list of labels defined in the elilo config file. If the user already typed a name and if the name corresponds to a specified label, the chooser will show how the label is expanded and what the final command line to the kernel will look like. If the line is empty pressing TAB generates something similar to: ELILO boot: linux-up linux nfsroot (or any kernel file name: [dev_name:]/path/file) Note that first label correspond to the default label used if the user hits the enter key with an empty line. This label is not necessarily the first one in the config file. Now pressing TAB with a full label name: ELILO boot: linux-up desc : my default UP kernel cmdline: vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb2 console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty0 ro The desc line shows whatever was specified in the "description" option for this particular image in the config file. = : shows the list of accessible devices this key force elilo to print the list of detected devices. Elilo will auto-detect the devices which are accessible to load a config file, the kernel, the initrd from. Those devices typically represent disk partition, CDROM, floppy, or a network path. The list of devices is highly system dependent. It also depends on the filesystem support compiled into elilo. The way the devices are named depends on the device naming scheme selected. It also depends on whether the EDD30 support is activated. For instance, pressing the ? could look as follows: ELILO boot: scsi0 : vfat : Acpi(PNP0A03,2)/Pci(1|0)/Scsi(Pun0,Lun0)/HD(Part1,Sig72040800) scsi1 : vfat : Acpi(PNP0A03,2)/Pci(1|0)/Scsi(Pun6,Lun0)/HD(Part1,Sig00000000) scsi2 : ext2fs : Acpi(PNP0A03,2)/Pci(1|0)/Scsi(Pun0,Lun0)/HD(Part2,Sig72040800) scsi3 : ext2fs : Acpi(PNP0A03,2)/Pci(1|0)/Scsi(Pun6,Lun0)/HD(Part2,Sig00000000) net0 : netfs : Acpi(PNP0A03,0)/Pci(5|0)/Mac(00D0B7A6FC25) 5 devices available for booting boot device net0: netfs Here the vfat (EFI partition type), ext2fs and network filesysten (not to be confused with NFS) were compiled into elilo and were detected on the machine. The left handside of the colon show the logical name associated with the device. For instance, scsi0 corresponds to the first partition of SCSI disk ID 0 and is an EFI partition. The net0 correspond to a network device, here the Ethernet adapter. The last line show the device used to load elilo itself, in the case elilo was downloaded from the network. To get a kernel from scsi0, the user can simply type: ELILO boot: scsi0:/usr/src/linux/vmlinux Note that even though elilo was not downloaded from the network, it is still possible to get the kernel and initrd from a remote machine. % : shows the list of defined variables Elilo has builtin variables which are used to dynamically customized the command line parameters passed to the kernel. The list of variables depends on the support compiled into elilo. Not all elilo subsystems use variables. Typically the network file system does. Pressing '%' only prints the variables that are defined with their current values. Some variables are only defined once the subsystem that creates them has been used. In other words, if the network filesystem was not used to load elilo, then the variables defined by it are not created. If the network was actually used, pressing '%' could generate the following output: ELILO boot: D = "mydomain.com G = "192.168.3.1" H = "test_machine" I = "192.168.3.4" M = "255.255.255.0" & : shows the list default path The path is used as a prefix for all filenames specified as relative. ? : shows the list of supported command keys The simple chooser has also some builtin command line editing commands: ESC : abort (leave elilo) CTRL-D : abort (leave elilo) CTRL-C : kill line empty current line and prompt for new input CTRL-H : erase the previous character CTRL-U : clear current line reset the buffer (does not display correctly if buffer spans more than one line) Backspace: erase character