Which boot loader an Alpha system uses depends on its firmware. Almost every Alpha that runs Linux today boots it with aboot from the SRM console. MILO is needed only on the few systems without SRM, such as the Alpha XLT and the AlphaPC 164UX (Ruffian); no released MILO binary boots a current kernel, so it must be built from the alphalinux/milo repository. Under QEMU, no boot loader is used: QEMU loads the kernel and initrd itself. See Installation for the complete procedure.
Distributions for Alpha package aboot rather than GRUB. In Gentoo, for example, sys-boot/aboot is keyworded only for Alpha, and sys-boot/grub is not keyworded for Alpha at all. 1) 2)
| Boot loader | Firmware | Description |
|---|---|---|
| aboot | SRM console | Loads Linux from a disk, CD, or the network, using the console's PALcode and services |
| MILO | ARC, AlphaBIOS, ARCSBIOS | Miniloader that provides its own PALcode and device drivers, loaded through linload.exe or ldmilo.exe; last released in 2001, so current kernels need a MILO built from source |
| APB | AlphaBIOS on the UP1000 | Loaded by AlphaBIOS; reads the AlphaBIOS boot configuration to find the kernel 3). The UP1000 can instead be flashed with API's SRM console and boot with aboot; see UP1000: Firmware 4) |
| None | qemu-palcode, under QEMU | QEMU loads the kernel and initrd given with -kernel and -initrd; see QEMU 5) |
The SRM console can also boot a Linux kernel directly over the network with BOOTP, without a boot loader, using an image built with the kernel's bootpfile or bootpzfile target. 6) An initrd can be appended to the image by setting INITRD to its path when building the target. 7) See aboot: Network booting.
| Document | Date |
|---|---|
| Installation, on this wiki | |
| SRM Firmware Howto, v0.8.1 by Rich Payne and David Huggins-Daines | February 2004 |
| Alpha Miniloader Howto, v0.85 (historical; see MILO for current usage) | April 1997 |
readme.1st in up1000_srm_5.6_beta.zip, alphalinux/firmware repository