Boot Parameters for SL4 and SL5 LiveCD
IMPORTANT: This description is valid for SL4 and SL5 only.
For SL6 see Boot Parameters for SL6 LiveCD.
Boot parameters (also known as cheatcodes) can be used to affect the boot process and
change the behaviour of the LiveCD such as hardware detection.
If you boot your PC from the LiveCD a graphical Scientific Linux logo appears.
At the very bottom you should see a "boot: " prompt.
Type "linux" or "smp" (in case of SL4 and SMP kernel) followed by one or more boot parameters.
For example:
boot: linux afs cell=psi.ch kb=sg-latin1
The following boot parameters are available
(press F1, F2, F3 or F4 to see the options at the boot prompt):
- automount: to enable automounting of all found harddisks
- noswap: do not search for SWAP partition
- changes=..: define a folder or partition to save changes, see Persistent LiveCD.
- home=...: define local /home (/dev/hda1, /dev/hda2:/folder)
- nofstab: do not add local harddisk(s) to /etc/fstab and skip scanning for local harddisk partitions
- romount: found devices are listed in /etc/fstab as ro (read only)
- nodma: disable DMA for cdrom and disk devices
- noeject: do not eject LiveCD at the very end (available since 2008-07-21)
- ramsize=...: Set the amount of RAM that will be used for changes made on the LiveCD filesystem. The rest can be used by the applications (default ramsize=70%)
- nolocal: to start Linux without a local user
- noroot: to start Linux without a root user
- nopasswd: set empty passwords for root and local user
- pw=any_password: to set the password
- user=username: user name of local user, default is sluser
- acpi=off: to disable ACPI power management
- apm=off: to disable APM power management
- pci=nommconf: to bypassing pci probing
- debug: to start Linux shell several times during the boot
- toram: copies the whole LiveCD to RAM (you need a lot)
- afs: to start AFS during the boot
- noafs: to disable AFS (default)
- cell=your.cell: to set an AFS cell
- cups=server: to set a CUPS server
- ssh: to start SSH server during the boot
- ntpd: to start ntpd during the boot
- serviceon=s1[:s2:..]: to enable the service(s) s1,s2,... (e.g. serviceon=ntpd:portmap)
- serviceoff=s1[:s2:..]: to disable the service(s) s1,s2,... (e.g. serviceoff=pcmcia:acpid)
- fastboot: enable fast booting (by disabling some services)
- nokudzu: do not run hardware auto-detection
- usbdelay=...: set delay in seconds after loading usb modules (default 8 seconds) (added 2010-05-03)
- blacklist=m1[:m2:..]: put kernel modules m1, m2,... on blacklist for hotplug service (added 2010-06-14)
- nohotplug: do not run hotplugd inside udev (added 2010-06-14)
- nonet: do not start network during the boot
- wlan: tries to start WLAN devices during the boot
- ip=...: define static IP
- gw=...: define static gateway
- netmask=...: define static netmask
- hostname=...: define hostname
- kb=us: to set a keyboard layout (or keyboard=...)
- nox: do not start the X server
- simplex: simple X server configuration (failsafe)
- screen=1024x768: specify the screen resolution
- vsync=50-60: specify the vertical monitor rates (in Hz)
- hsync=50-60: specify the horizontal monitor rates (in Hz)
- vesa: to use VESA driver
- nvidia: try to use NVIDIA driver (if available)
- nonvidia: do not use NVIDIA driver (default)
- xdriver=drivername: to use a specific driver for the Xserver (i810,...)
- nosound: turn off sound (volume=0)
- gnome: make gnome the default windows manager
- kde: make kde the default windows manager
- withx: set runlevel to 5 (added 2010-05-03)
- nfsroot=IP:/folder: location of LiveCD on the NFS server, see Diskless Client.
- nfsopts=...: set NFS mount options, default is nolock,ro,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,hard,intr (added 2008-08-01)
- dhcpdelay=...: set delay in seconds before doing a dhcp request. The default is dhcpdelay=8 (added 2009-11-14)
- load=module.mo: load module.mo
Last modified: Friday, 18-Mar-2011 19:28:31 CET
by Urs Beyerle
