Appendix 7: Arguments

The kernel accepts arguments of the following form:

no387=

This argument tells the kernel not to use the math co 

processor, even when present.

The kernel must, of

course, be compiled with math emulation support for

this to work.

root=

Tells the kernel which partition to use as the root device.

This value can be entered as a text string, like /dev/hda4,

or as the major/minor number for the device, which for

hda4 is  0x304  for major 3 and minor 4, fsck has been

run. This argument can be set with rdev.

debug=

Under normal circumstances the kernel logs only those

messages of debug level 7 or below to the console.

Using this argument will send all debug messages to the

console. klogd also has options that it will accept to

modify what debug level will get logged. See the man

page for details.

reserve=

Protects various i/o ports from being probed. It takes

the form: reserve=iobase,extent[,iobase,extent]...

and

will keep one device driver from probing sensitive ports

on another card. Since that card will eventually need to

be initialized by its own driver, this command is usually

used in conjunction with another. If the device foo is

caused to lock up by a probe from another device, the

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