I was wondering if anyone knew of, or could point me to, a complete and detailed description of ALL of the steps involved in a linux installation (it wouldn't mattter that much if it was distro-specific, as long as it was complete). I'm interested in every discrete task that happens from the time the install commences until the installation process is completed. I want to know what is supposed to happen in each of the various steps that take place while you sit there drinking your beverage of choice while the installation takes place, from formatting, partitioning, file system setup, device probing, configuration, and application loading. My hope is that all of this is somewhere in one document and not spread over 17 different sources.

I'm not interested in the user's view of what is going on, but rather what's going on from the perspective of the installation program itself, what it's doing, each of the installation steps it has to go through.

I guess the Gentoo Handbook does have a lot of the specific things needed to install Linux: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...x86.xml?full=1

If you really want to get involved: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/