Topic: Insight into GNU/Linux boot process

[sam]

Booting an operating system has always been considered a challenging task. In this document we will take a look at the different aspects of the boot process. Such as the BIOS which is the first code which runs, the boot loaders that can load different operating systems, pass arguments to the kernel, load it from different sources like a hard drive, a flash, and network & finally the kernel itself. Though loading the kernel & setting it up to execute is not all that is to be done, we need to bring the system up with different user specific configurations. We will look at the scripts, which deal with this. Linux has grown from a system that used to boot from a floppy providing no luxurious features to the user, to the current jazzy Linux systems. It is important to have an insight of the Linux boot procedure. Say for Linux to serve the purpose on embedded systems, the generic boot procedure must almost always be modified to meet the needs of the target application.

http://unixbhaskar.blogspot.com/2010/03/insight-into-gnulinux-boot-process.html