The Linux Boot Process
Apr 14, 2009, 15:04 (4 Talkback[s])
[ Thanks to Brandon for this link.
]
"Turning Your System On
As soon as you turn on your system, your computer (specifically
your motherboard's BIOS) will run a series of tests. These tests
are called POST (for Power On Self Test). The purpose of these
tests is to make sure your hardware settings are configured
correctly. It will test to see how much memory is installed, if
your devices are working correctly and locate what devices the
system can use to continue the boot process.
"This process is operating system agnostic. Meaning regardless
of what operating system you are currently using, the POST will be
executed as soon as you hit the power button on your system.
"Boot Loader
Once the BIOS finds a hard drive to boot from, it passes control
over to the boot loader. Since a hard drive can have multiple
operating systems installed on multiple partitions, the boot
loaders function is to give the user a list of choices he/she can
make to continue. A user could potentially have MS Windows and a
few Linux distributions on one hard drive. The boot loader will
give the user the option to choose which operating system they want
to run."
Complete
Story
Related Stories:
- Moblin Linux will boot in about 2 seconds(Apr 13, 2009)
- Concurrent Booting: make full use of your multi-core processors in Ubuntu(Apr 13, 2009)
- Installing Ubuntu on Windows without partitioning(Apr 10, 2009)
- PXE: Not Just for Server Networks Anymore!(Apr 03, 2009)
- Using The BTRFS Filesystem On Debian Lenny(Apr 02, 2009)
- Presto Loads a Streamlined Desktop in 15 Seconds(Mar 20, 2009)
- Imagine booting up, logging on before your hair turns gray(Mar 19, 2009)
- How does Ubuntu's Upstart system initialization compare with runit?(Mar 17, 2009)
- Linux tip: Finding rootfs during boot(Mar 12, 2009)
- How to fix Linux boot problems(Mar 03, 2009)
