Power-On and the Boot Loader
In general, when a PC-style computer first boots, it starts the BIOS. The BIOS is a small piece of software that figures out things like which drives are attached and what they’re attached to, what sort of CPU is installed, and how much memory is available. After getting that information, the BIOS loads a minimal boot loader from some kind of storage device.[11]
The boot loader is a small program that handles initial system configuration and boots the kernel. It finds and starts the kernel, which in turn detects hardware, attaches device drivers, and performs other core setup. Finally, the kernel calls init(8), which starts processes and enables user programs, network interfaces, server software, and so on.
While ...
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