BIOS : BIOS BIOS tests the system, valid device with which to y CDROM Hard drive The BIOS

in the first sector of this

looks for and checks peripherals, and then locates a boot the system. Load boot sector from one of: Flopp then loads into memory whatever program is residing device, called the Master Boot Record or MBR.

Master Boot Record (MBR) : Master Boot Record (MBR) MBR contains: The first 446 bytes are the primary boot loader, which contains both executable code and error message text. Partition ta ble Magic Number (Used for Validation Check for MBR) The job of the primary boot loader is to find and load the secondary boot loader (stage 2). The secondary, or second-stage, boot loader could be more aptly called the kernel loader. Boot Loader : Boot Loader Under Red Hat Linux two boot loaders are available: GRUB (GRant Unif ied Boot Loader) LILO (LInux LOader) Both boot loaders are broken into 2 stages. The first stage is a small machine code binary on the MBR. It locateS the secon d stage boot loader and load the first part of it into memory. Once the second s tage boot loader has determined which kernel to boot, it locates the correspondi ng kernel binary in the /boot/ directory. The boot loader then places the initia l RAM disk image i.e. initrd, into memory. Once the kernel and the initrd image are loaded into memory, the boot loader hands control of the boot process to the kernel. The Kernel : The Kernel Initializes and configures the computer's memory and configures the v arious hardware attached to the system. It then looks for the compressed initrd image in a predetermined location in memory, decompresses it, mounts it, and loa ds all necessary drivers. The initrd is used by the kernel to load drivers neces sary to boot the system. The kernel then set a root device, mounts the root part ition read-only, and frees any unused memory. In order to set up the user enviro nment, the kernel executes the /sbin/init program. Init Program : Init Program Co-ordinates the rest of the boot process and configures the enviro nment for the user. It becomes the parent or grandparent of all of the processes that start up automatically. It runs the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit script. Read the /etc/inittab, which describes how the system should be set up in each init runle vel. inittab entries specify up to four fields separated by colon [:] , the fiel ds are: identifier : runlevel : action : command 3 : 23 : respawn : /sbin/minget ty tty3 The init program starts all of the background processes by looking in th e appropriate rc directory for the runlevel specified as default in /etc/inittab . The rc directories are numbered to corresponds to the runlevel they represent. For instance, /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/ is the directory for runlevel 5. Continued.., Init Program : Init Program The /sbin/init first stops all of the K* symbolic links in the dire ctory. It then starts all of the S* symbolic links. One of the last things the i nit program executes is the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file. /etc/inittab script forks a /sbin/mingetty process for each virtual console (login prompts) allocated to th e runlevel. The /sbin/mingetty process opens communication pathways to tty devic es, sets their modes, prints the login prompt, gets the user name, and initiates the login process for the user. l vcreate -L 100M -T vg001/mythi npo o l -V1G -n thi nvo l ume l vcreate --si ze 100M --snapsho t --name snap /dev/vg00/l vo l 1