4.1. What is PALO?

PALO is a set of two programs, a boot loader, which is loaded by the PA-RISC firmware in memory and then executed, and a boot media management tool, which prepares and updates bootable media such as hard disk drives. The PALO boot loader executable is stored in a file called iplboot. 'IPL' is HP jargon for Initial Program Loader. The boot media management tool is called PALO, which stands for PA/Linux LOader, just as on x86 the boot media management tool is called LILO, though it's worth mentionning that PALO doesn't usually need to be called every time you build and install a new kernel, as LILO does. PALO is strongly related to PA/Linux development. Thus, several versions has been released. The last changes are explained by the author of PALO, Paul Bame, in this mail.