Ok I need a tutorial which describes the boot process of a Linux system. Sorry.. I should 'start-up' as boot articles seem to be fairly low level and not what I'm looking for.

I found this article:

http://www.luv.asn.au/overheads/linux-startup.html

And while it helps, I need a bit more info.

For instance, video detection. I need to know the boot process, where X11 gets invoked, when the OS boots, etc. and mostly, what script controls the sequence of startup programs.

I'm having a lot of trouble with this. Any help would be great.

That is something that varies between distros, everyone has their own way of doing it.

Oh great..

I'm also noticing that I can't even find the files to even view. They seem to be in compressed files that only get unpacked at run time.

What would you say has the most documentation on these subjects?

Check out the Hands on Guide at http://tldp.org/guides.html

You can also see how Slackware boots up. Slackware has some of the best readable startup scripts. Check them out.

go to /etc. and look at the rc directories. Somewhere, there will be names like rc4, rc5, etc. The scripts in these get called based on the runlevel specified. eg. for RL5, every script in rc5.d gets executed in alphabetical order. The script names are prefixed with K (kill) or S (start) to control what stuff gets shutdown, and what gets started for each runlevel.

On some systems, there is a file named "inittab" which defines various things including the default run level. I just looked in a Ubuntu system and could not immediately identify the equivalent.

Googling using something like "Linux startup" will find a lot more stuff.

Err, i think that's numerical order surely ?

Wow! That clears things up greatly! I've spent hours yesterday and this morning reading about this and peicing it together in my head. But I feel you summed it up best. I'm trying to use a version that is based off slackware 10.0 (it's uncompressed so I can brows folders and read these files while at work).

I've browsed all the files I can and cannot seem to find reference to the XFree/Xorg system. I would like to find the routine that gets the video reselution from the Xorg/XFree86/XVesa.

I see serveral files with several monitor resolutions, but I'm having so much difficulty finding at what point this file gets created and when it is used.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've spent about 10 hrs total reading since yesterday.

On Suse, all the start up scripts are in /etc/init.d/

If you copy a script into that directory, it has the potential to be picked up by a configuration tool which links the scripts into their respective rc directory.

Depending on what rc directory the link is in, the script will be called at that run level.

There is usually some kind of pleasant looking program that manages the copying / linking of the startup script to the appropriate rc.

in suse, they directory structure is as follows:
/etc/init.d/rc0.d
/etc/init.d/rc1.d <--run level 1
...
/etc/init.d/rc5.d <--run level 5

This should be similar in all distros, except for the init.d thing.

Drop me a line if there are any questions.

Thanks!


--
stoobers@gmail.com
Christopher Stubban

You can find this in:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf

There is a program to determine it for you:
sax2 (run as root)

Alphabetical, as I understand it. e.g. everything beginning with "K" for kill runs before the ones beginning with "S" for start.

I think it's S for startup, K for shutdown, then (within either list), it's numerical order in order to satisfy dependencies eg networking before DNS on boot up.

I believe we are both correct....
k01
k02
k03
s01
s02
s03
(alphabetical order...and numerical order after the first letter)

<<EDIT>>: In a typical rc.X directory, there can be several scripts (links, actually) that begin with K or S and the same number. eg these:
get run in alphabetical order.