FreeBSD® Unleashed

The Kernel

The standard kernel is normally located in /boot/kernel, and is started by the loader. As mentioned before, the kernel is the core of the operating system. It controls all access to hardware resources from both programs and users.

The white messages that you see onscreen when FreeBSD starts are messages from the kernel as it finds and initializes your hardware. Most of these messages will go by too fast for you to read, but after you log into the system, you can use the command dmesg | more to view them one screen at a time, and use the spacebar to advance to the next screen. Some example messages from the kernel on the system are shown as follows. This example does not show all the messages, but it gives you an idea of the kind of ...