The SPARC Improved bootLOader (SILO) is the bootloader used by the SPARC

SPARC

SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....

 port of the Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 operating system; it can also be used for Solaris as a replacement for the standard Solaris boot loader.

SILO generally looks similar to the basic version of LILO

LILO (boot loader)

LILO is a generic boot loader for Linux.-Overview:LILO does not depend on a specific file system, and can boot an operating system from floppy disks and hard disks. One of up to sixteen different images can be selected at boot time. Various parameters, such as the root device, can be set...

, giving a "boot:" prompt, at which the user can press the Tab key

Tab key

Tab key on a keyboard is used to advance the cursor to the next tab stop.- Origin :The word tab derives from the word tabulate, which means "to arrange data in a tabular, or table, form"...

 to see the available images to boot. The configuration file format is reasonably similar to LILO's, as well as some of the command-line options. However, SILO differs significantly from LILO because it reads and parses the configuration file at boot time, so it is not necessary to re-run it after every change to the file or to the installed kernel images. SILO is able to access ext2

Ext2

The ext2 or second extended filesystem is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system ....

, ext3

Ext3

The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It is the default file system for many popular Linux distributions, including Debian...

, UFS

Unix File System

The Unix file system is a file system used by many Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is also called the Berkeley Fast File System, the BSD Fast File System or FFS...

, romfs

Romfs

In computing, romfs is an extremely simple file system lacking many features, intended for burning important files onto an EEPROM. It is available on Linux, and possibly other Unix-like systems....

 and ISO 9660

ISO 9660

ISO 9660, also referred to as CDFS by some hardware and software providers, is a file system standard published by the International Organization for Standardization for optical disc media....

 file systems, enabling it to boot arbitrary kernels from them (more similar to GRUB

GNU GRUB

GNU GRUB is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Multiboot Specification, which provides a user the choice to boot one of multiple operating systems installed on a computer or select a specific kernel configuration available on a particular...

).

SILO also has support for transparent decompression of gzipped vmlinux

Vmlinux

On Linux systems, vmlinux is a statically linked executable file that contains the Linux kernel in one of the object file formats supported by Linux, including ELF, COFF and a.out...

 images, making the bzImage format unnecessary on SPARC Linux.

SILO is loaded from the SPARC PROM

Programmable read-only memory

A programmable read-only memory or field programmable read-only memory or one-time programmable non-volatile memory is a form of digital memory where the setting of each bit is locked by a fuse or antifuse. Such PROMs are used to store programs permanently...

.

Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 (GPL).

See also

• bootman
  Bootman
  bootman is the Haiku and BeOS boot loader on x86 systems. It resides solely in the master boot record and does not require installing Haiku or BeOS, although it must be installed from Haiku or BeOS....
  
  
• LILO
  LILO (boot loader)
  LILO is a generic boot loader for Linux.-Overview:LILO does not depend on a specific file system, and can boot an operating system from floppy disks and hard disks. One of up to sixteen different images can be selected at boot time. Various parameters, such as the root device, can be set...
  
  
• elilo
• NTLDR
  NTLDR
  NTLDR is the boot loader for all releases of Windows NT operating system up to and including Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. NTLDR is typically run from the primary hard disk drive, but it can also run from portable storage devices such as a CD-ROM, USB flash drive, or floppy disk...
  
  
• PDCurses
  PDCurses
  PDCurses is a public domain curses programming library for DOS, Windows, X11 and SDL. While development of the original curses library halted in the mid-1990s, the development of ncurses and PDcurses continued. PDcurses implements most of the functions available in the original X/Open and System V...
  
   package for Windows in GnuWin32
  GnuWin32
  The GnuWin32 project provides native ports in the form of runnable computer programs, patches, and source code for various GNU and open source tools and software, much of it modified to run on the 32-bit Windows platform...
  
  
• BCD
  Windows Vista Startup Process
  The startup process of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is different from any previous versions of Windows. For Windows Vista, the boot sector loads the Windows Boot Manager , which first looks for an active partition, then accesses the Boot Configuration...