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-rw-r--r--man/bootup.xml37
1 files changed, 22 insertions, 15 deletions
diff --git a/man/bootup.xml b/man/bootup.xml
index 386af9e4de..9468a61319 100644
--- a/man/bootup.xml
+++ b/man/bootup.xml
@@ -23,22 +23,29 @@
<refsect1>
<title>Description</title>
- <para>A number of different components are involved in the system
- boot. Immediately after power-up, the system BIOS will do minimal
- hardware initialization, and hand control over to a boot loader
- stored on a persistent storage device. This boot loader will then
- invoke an OS kernel from disk (or the network). In the Linux case,
- this kernel (optionally) extracts and executes an initial RAM disk
- image (initrd), such as generated by
+ <para>A number of different components are involved in the boot of a Linux system. Immediately after
+ power-up, the system firmware will do minimal hardware initialization, and hand control over to a boot
+ loader (e.g.
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-boot</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry> or
+ <ulink url="https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/">GRUB</ulink>) stored on a persistent storage device. This
+ boot loader will then invoke an OS kernel from disk (or the network). On systems using EFI or other types
+ of firmware, this firmware may also load the kernel directly.</para>
+
+ <para>The kernel (optionally) mounts an in-memory file system, often generated by
<citerefentry project='die-net'><refentrytitle>dracut</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
- which looks for the root file system (possibly using
- <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
- for this). After the root file system is found and mounted, the
- initrd hands over control to the host's system manager (such as
- <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>)
- stored on the OS image, which is then responsible for probing all
- remaining hardware, mounting all necessary file systems and
- spawning all configured services.</para>
+ which looks for the root file system. Nowadays this is usually implemented as an initramfs — a compressed
+ archive which is extracted when the kernel boots up into a lightweight in-memory file system based on
+ tmpfs, but in the past normal file systems using an in-memory block device (ramdisk) were used, and the
+ name "initrd" is still used to describe both concepts. It's the boot loader or the firmware that loads
+ both the kernel and initrd/initramfs images into memory, but the kernel which interprets it as a file
+ system. <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry> may
+ be used to manage services in the initrd, similarly to the real system.</para>
+
+ <para>After the root file system is found and mounted, the initrd hands over control to the host's system
+ manager (such as
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>) stored in
+ the root file system, which is then responsible for probing all remaining hardware, mounting all
+ necessary file systems and spawning all configured services.</para>
<para>On shutdown, the system manager stops all services, unmounts
all file systems (detaching the storage technologies backing