From the course: Advanced Linux: The Linux Kernel

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Understanding the bootloader GRUB

Understanding the bootloader GRUB - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Advanced Linux: The Linux Kernel

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Understanding the bootloader GRUB

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- [Instructor] Yay for Grub, the Grand Unified Linux bootloader. Now when you power on your system, there's probably some sort of power on self test in the BIOS and things like that, but the system will start up the bootloader. GRUB will be in a special place in the disc for the system to be able to find it. That gets started and it's GRUB's job to load the kernel into RAM and also commonly with Linux, there's going to be a fairly small, little file system called the initial root file system, sometimes called the Knit rd. It used to be a RAM disc. So GRUB loads those two files in memory and then starts up the kernel, passing to it the kernel command line that's set in GRUB's config file and GRUB has some nice features, including being able to be interrupted before it starts to kernel. GRUB is quite powerful. GRUB is built with support for some file systems so that it can read your disc and look for files by name. Some bootloaders can't do that. That means, for example, with the…

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