The boot loader on SGI machines is arcboot. It has to be installed on the same hard disk as the kernel (this is done automatically by the installer). Arcboot supports different configurations which are set up in /etc/arcboot.conf. Each configuration has a unique name, the default setup as created by the installer is linux. After arcboot has been installed, the system can be booted from hard disk by setting some firmware environment variables entering setenv SystemPartition scsi(scsi)disk(disk)rdisk(0)partition(0) setenv OSLoadPartition scsi(scsi)disk(disk)rdisk(0)partition(partnr) setenv OSLoader arcboot setenv OSLoadFilename config setenv AutoLoad yes on the firmware prompt, and then typing boot. scsi is the SCSI bus to be booted from, this is 0 for the onboard controllers disk is the SCSI ID of the hard disk on which arcboot is installed partnr is the number of the partition on which /etc/arcboot.conf resides config is the name of the configuration entry in /etc/arcboot.conf, which is linux by default.