Operating system/Boot Loader

This is a lesson in in the course, Operating system, which is a part of The School of Computer Science

Objective

 * Become familiar with a boot loader.
 * Learn where the boot loader resides on a disk.
 * Learn where the boot loader resides in memory.
 * Learn the functions of a boot loader.

The Boot Loader
The function of a boot loader, sometimes just called bootloader, is to initialize the hardware, set boot parameters, load a kernel image into RAM, and pass control to the loaded kernel. Some well know boot loaders are grub and uboot. A boot loader can simply be one file that does little preprocessing for the operating system, although some boot loaders are multiple files large and contain much preprocess operations. A boot loader like that needs to preform a loading process called chain loading.

The Boot Loader's Home
The boot loader usual resides near the beginning of the disk. Older disk formats like the FAT 12 held the boot loader in the first sector.

Assignments



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