The LILO Makefile supplied with the LILO installation files is valid for most installations, although you should carefully check all the entries. LILO uses either the Makefile, which contains all the instructions for a C compiler to compile a binary from the source code, or another file called /etc/lilo/config.defines. If the config.defines file exists, Makefile is ignored. For most purposes, editing the Makefile is sufficient, although if you plan to use LILO a lot, the config.defines file is a better alternative because it isn’t overwritten with new versions of LILO.

The Makefile has several parameters that control the compilation process. You may need to change some of the values, depending on your system requirements. Check the following parameters in the Makefile and ensure that the values they have set are what you want:

* IGNORECASE makes image names case insensitive. This parameter is active by default and should be left alone.

* NO1STDIAG does not generate diagnostic messages when read errors are encountered in the boot loader. This parameter is disabled by default. It’s best to leave it disabled unless you don’t care about the error messages.

* The NOINSTDEF parameter tells you that if the install option is omitted from the command line, don’t install a new boot sector. Instead, modify the old one. This parameter is disabled by default.

* ONE_SHOT disables the command line timeout if any key is pressed. This parameter is disabled by default.

* READONLY prevents overwriting of the default command line sector of the map file. This parameter is disabled by default.