Hi!
I interpret your question as you want to know what happens when Linux boots. This is a sketchy overview:
o LILO or GRUB (the bootloader) loads the kernel (you'll find it in the /boot/ directory) and an optional initial ram disk which contains some utilities that the kernel might need.
o The kernel configures itself and the hardware and starts the file system.
o The kernel then executes the command /sbin/init. If you look at it, you will notice that it
always has PID (Process ID) 1:
ps -aux |grep init
You can put any statically linked program there. I tried with a small "Hello world" C program once. It indeed did print the Hello world string, but my program exited after that. The init program is supposed to never exit, so the kernel paniced.
If you are not good at using a rescue disk -- don't try this at home!
o Anyway, the init program reads the file /etc/inittab which is the configuration file for init and acts accordingly. After that it's pretty distribution dependant, but from here on it's scripts galore.
This page contains some more info:
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/Lin...itProcess.html
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Martin
thanx
