Hi Everyone

I have been using Linux full time since 2004. I feel I am a competent user but I don't really understand how it works very well. I think diving a little further in would make me a better programmer and user.

I know some people read and build linux-from-scratch. I was wondering about another approach.

If I read up more on the bootstrapping sequence and typed:

ps -aux


and I factored out things like the shell I had to run this in and bash but I studied each process that was started on a newly booted system, would I have a good idea of what is keeping it up and running, offering services? As a side note, I understand that several of the ps results are instances of the same program, for example getty.

Thanks for reading-Patrick

The best way to find out what gets started at boot is probably to work through the init scripts (assuming you are using sysvinit). That's what I did when I started. Read the script in one console, have man pages showing in another and just work out what each script does.

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Another thing to try would be to use different output layouts for ps, such as a tree:

Then you can see what has started what.

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Thanks Hazel and Thanks Turbcapitalist

two excellent ideas ! -Patrick

Also notice that some of the threads (whose names always begin with "k") are kernel threads.

These "threads" are part of the kernel, and they execute in kernel space under a very special set of rules. This facility allows portions of the kernel to be independently dispatched, with all the advantages that "being a thread" offers, while still remaining "part of the kernel." For instance, a kernel thread can initiate an I/O operation and then wait for that operation to complete, much like a user-land thread can do.

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I'd say that one can learn a lot from LFS but that almost has nothing to do with bootstrap.

There used to be some info both on hardware side and you almost need to know that if you really want to get down to the real parts of booting.

Some places I learned a lot was from sites that deal with loading like peter anvin syslinux pages and grub pages as well as other loaders.

From hardware to loader then you can set up your booting of linux in some form.

My #1 favorite 'small' recent high-rated book, has your Thread title
http://amazon.com/How-Linux-Works-Su.../dp/1593275676

Best wishes; ENJOY studying! p.s. try a '3-piece 7MB' mll! VBoxes?

p.p.s. I ran across a SINGLE free sample chapter .pdf of a [RHCE] book I liked at my local library, on the boot process, GRUB, systemd here. Of course, there's tons 'on the net'; try adding 'wiki' to your web-searches, to get great tutorial articles!