Chapter 14: Hardware Configuration

The Hardware configuration tab presents several options for hardware level settings (Figure14-1).This includes disk partitions, boot loader, printer administration, system time and date, and more. The exact options available vary greatly depending on platform.

Figure 14-1: Hardware configuration

Linux Boot Configuration

If you are running Linux, Webmin provides module for editing the /etc/lilo.conf file that the LInux LOader, or LILO for short, uses. LILO is the boot manager most commonly used with Linux. It works by writing a small boot sector to the MBR on your boot disk. This boot sector contains the code needed to first present a prompt:

LILO: 

This allows you to select the kernel or operating system to boot. LILO can boot multiple operating systems and multiple versions of the Linux kernel. When you open the Linux Bootup Configuration page (Figure 14-2), you should see at least one boot kernel or boot partition. Boot kernels are for Linux kernels, while boot partitions are for other operating systems.

Figure 14-2: Linux Bootup Configuration

Clicking one of the boot kernel or boot partition icons will allow you to edit that boot kernel or partition (Figure 14-3).

Figure 14-3: Edit Boot Kernel

Here the name is an identifier for the kernel and it translates to label in the /etc/lilo.conf file. The Kernel to boot is the path to the Linux kernel boot image to load.

Kernel options

This field can be used to enter any arguments you need to pass to your kernel on boot. It is often used for specifying the amount of memory in a machine when Linux doesn’t recognize it all. For example, to specify 127MB of RAM, one could select Add options and add the line mem=127MB in the text field. This will be translated in the /etc/lilo.conf file to:

boot=/dev/hda  map=/boot/map  install=/boot/boot.b  prompt  timeout=50  default=linux  image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-11.0  label=linux  read-only  root=/dev/hda5  append="mem=127MB" 

It is always necessary to click Apply Changes from the main page in order to write a new boot sector to the boot device. This button simply runs /sbin/lilo.