From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.43) id 1Dx8Y8-0000Cu-D6 for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:23:40 -0400 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Dx8Y6-0000CA-1J for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:23:38 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Dx8Y5-0000Bk-2e for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:23:37 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Dx8Y4-0000AA-HV for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:23:36 -0400 Received: from [212.43.237.68] (helo=kotoba.storever.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1Dx8cU-0002nM-Tp for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:28:11 -0400 Received: from ASSP-nospam (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by kotoba.storever.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D05EE11F0F772 for ; Mon, 25 Jul 2005 21:17:13 +0200 (CEST) Received: from 127.0.0.1 ([127.0.0.1] helo=ip6-localhost) by ASSP-nospam ; 25 Jul 05 19:17:13 -0000 From: "Yoshinori K. Okuji" Organization: enbug.org To: The development of GRUB 2 Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 21:16:41 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.7.2 References: <200507242044.19861.okuji@enbug.org> <798ee839cfbfdb4093c2e9e90b4d861e@penguinppc.org> <87hdein8r8.fsf@student.han.nl> In-Reply-To: <87hdein8r8.fsf@student.han.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200507252116.41699.okuji@enbug.org> Subject: Re: grub-install X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: The development of GRUB 2 List-Id: The development of GRUB 2 List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 19:23:38 -0000 On Monday 25 July 2005 18:35, Marco Gerards wrote: > So an example of a boot process is: > > - The BIOS loads the GRUB2 (boot.img) as it is stored in the MBR > > - GRUB2 in the MBR loads that 31KB into memory and jumps to it > > - That 31KB consists of the kernel (kernel.img) and some raw modules In details, the core image consists of diskboot.img, kernel.img then zero or more modules. boot.img loads only the first sector (diskboot.img) from a disk, and diskboot.img loads the rest of the core image. In the case of PXE, pxeboot.img is prepended to the core image, and simply jumps to the start address in kernel.img, because PXE ROM loads the whole core image from a network. > - The kernel (rescue mode) starts and loads every module The kernel initializes the system briefly, and decompresses the compressed part of the core image. After this, the kernel loads all pre-loaded modules from the memory. > I hope this e-mail made clear how GRUB 2 basically works on the PC. > I am not a PC expert and my English is not that good. Hopefully > someone can and will correct me if I was wrong so I will understand > things better. Hopefully Hollis' question is answered. Your description is really good. Well, the bootstrap on i386-pc is complicated, because PC BIOS sucks. On other architectures, this can be simplified very much. Okuji