On Alpha workstations with SRM, aboot is used to load the kernel image. Aboot falls into the category of new-generation loaders that are able to read filesystems natively - but aboot only supports ext2, iso9660 and ufs filesystems. So the choise for the filesystem holding the kernel images is quite limitted ...
The layout of configuration file /etc/aboot.conf differs from the usual lilo style config - and is really simple.
It just contains a list of images to load starting with a unique number for later reference, for example at the SRM prompt - separated by a colon the partition containing the kernel image must be specified follow by the kernel filename and optional arguments. So a basic configuration looks like:
0:2/vmlinuz root=/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 ro