On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 12:42, AQ Tast <tasteaq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Could someone please explain how the kernel initializes, i.e. I >> want to know how does kernel starts from main function > http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linuxboot/ > It's quite good article at start, but it is a bit old and doesn't cover the newest kernel. If you want to get the details i suggest read great post on Gustawo Duarte blog: http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/kernel-boot-process Very useful is Makefile http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.37.2/Makefile you can trace kernel building process step by step and see what files are linking into kernel in which order. On the other hand, you have always up to date documentation of Kernel Boot Process in documentation directory in kernel sources: http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.37.2/Documentation/x86/boot.txt If you want to trace linux boot process in source code, you probably want to start at line: _start: # Explicitly enter this as bytes, or the assembler # tries to generate a 3-byte jump here, which causes # everything else to push off to the wrong offset. .byte 0xeb # short (2-byte) jump .byte start_of_setup-1f in arch/x86/boot/header.S (http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.37.2/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L108_) for x86 architecture. Have fun in exploring :) -- regards, Andrzej Kardas _______________________________________________ Kernelnewbies mailing list Kernelnewbies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies
