diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/boot/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/boot/chapter.sgml index 8a613156dc..f71e33d743 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/boot/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/boot/chapter.sgml @@ -1,1044 +1,1045 @@ Sergey Lyubka Contributed by Bootstrapping and kernel initialization Synopsis BIOS firmware POST IA-32 booting system initialization This chapter is an overview of the boot and system initialization process, starting from the BIOS (firmware) POST, to the first user process creation. Since the initial steps of system startup are very architecture dependent, the IA-32 architecture is used as an example. Overview A computer running FreeBSD can boot by several methods, although the most common method, booting from a harddisk where the OS is installed, will be discussed here. The boot process is divided into several steps: BIOS POST boot0 stage boot2 stage loader stage kernel initialization BIOS POST boot0 boot2 loader The boot0 and boot2 stages are also referred to as bootstrap stages 1 and 2 in &man.boot.8; as the first steps in FreeBSD's 3-stage bootstrapping procedure. Various information is printed on the screen at each stage, so you may visually recognize them using the table that follows. Please note that the actual data may differ from machine to machine: may vary BIOS (firmware) messages F1 FreeBSD F2 BSD F5 Disk 2 boot0 >>FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 1:ad(1,a)/boot/loader boot: boot2This prompt will appear if the user presses a key just after selecting an OS to boot at the boot0 stage. BTX loader 1.0 BTX version is 1.01 BIOS drive A: is disk0 BIOS drive C: is disk1 BIOS 639kB/64512kB available memory FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8 Console internal video/keyboard (jkh@bento.freebsd.org, Mon Nov 20 11:41:23 GMT 2000) /kernel text=0x1234 data=0x2345 syms=[0x4+0x3456] Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds..._ loader Copyright (c) 1992-2002 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD 4.6-RC #0: Sat May 4 22:49:02 GMT 2002 devnull@kukas:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/DEVNULL Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz kernel BIOS POST When the PC powers on, the processor's registers are set to some predefined values. One of the registers is the instruction pointer register, and its value after a power on is well defined: it is a 32-bit value of 0xfffffff0. The instruction pointer register points to code to be executed by the processor. One of the registers is the cr1 32-bit control register, and its value just after the reboot is 0. One of the cr1's bits, the bit PE (Protected Enabled) indicates whether the processor is running in protected or real mode. Since at boot time this bit is cleared, the processor boots in real mode. Real mode means, among other things, that linear and physical addresses are identical. The value of 0xfffffff0 is slightly less then 4Gb, so unless the machine has 4Gb physical memory, it cannot point to a valid memory address. The computer's hardware translates this address so that it points to a BIOS memory block. BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System, and it is a chip on the motherboard that has a relatively small amount of read-only memory (ROM). This memory contains various low-level routines that are specific to the hardware supplied with the motherboard. So, the processor will first jump to the address 0xfffffff0, which really resides in the BIOS's memory. Usually this address contains a jump instruction to the BIOS's POST routines. POST stands for Power On Self Test. This is a set of routines including the memory check, system bus check and other low-level stuff so that the CPU can initialize the computer properly. The important step on this stage is determining the boot device. All modern BIOS's allow the boot device to be set manually, so you can boot from a floppy, CD-ROM, harddisk etc. The very last thing in the POST is the INT 0x19 instruction. That instruction reads 512 bytes from the first sector of boot device into the memory at address 0x7c00. The term first sector originates from harddrive architecture, where the magnetic plate is divided to a number of cylindrical tracks. Tracks are numbered, and every track is divided by a number (usually 64) sectors. Track number 0 is the outermost on the magnetic plate, and sector 1, the first sector (tracks, or, cylinders, are numbered starting from 0, but sectors - starting from 1), has a special meaning. It is also called Master Boot Record, or MBR. The remaining sectors on the first track are never used Some utilities such as &man.disklabel.8; may store the information in this area, mostly in the second sector.. <literal>boot0</literal> stage MBR Take a look at the file /boot/boot0. This is a small 512-byte file, and it is exactly what FreeBSD's installation procedure wrote to your harddisk's MBR if you chose the bootmanager option at installation time. As mentioned previously, the INT 0x19 instruction loads an MBR, i.e. the boot0 content, into the memory at address 0x7c00. Taking a look at the file sys/boot/i386/boot0/boot0.s can give a guess at what is happening there - this is the boot manager, which is an awesome piece of code written by Robert Nordier. The MBR, or, boot0, has a special structure starting from offset 0x1be, called the partition table. It has 4 records of 16 bytes each, called partition records, which represent how the harddisk(s) are partitioned, or, in FreeBSD's terminology, sliced. One byte of those 16 says whether a partition (slice) is bootable or not. Exactly one record must have that flag set, otherwise boot0's code will refuse to proceed. A partition record has the following fields: the 1-byte filesystem type the 1-byte bootable flag the 6 byte descriptor in CHS format the 8 byte descriptor in LBA format A partition record descriptor has the information about where exactly the partition resides on the drive. Both descriptors, LBA and CHS, describe the same information, but in different ways: LBA (Logical Block Addressing) has the starting sector for the partition and the partition's length, while CHS (Cylinder Head Sector) has coordinates for the first and last sectors of the partition. The boot manager scans the partition table and prints the menu on the screen so the user can select what disk and what slice to boot. By pressing an appropriate key, boot0 performs the following actions: modifies the bootable flag for the selected partition to make it bootable, and clears the previous saves itself to disk to remember what partition (slice) has been selected so to use it as the default on the next boot loads the first sector of the selected partition (slice) into memory and jumps there What kind of data should reside on the very first sector of a bootable partition (slice), in our case, a FreeBSD slice? As you may have already guessed, it is boot2. <literal>boot2</literal> stage You might wonder, why boot2 comes after boot0, and not boot1. Actually, there is a 512-byte file called boot1 in the directory /boot as well. It is used for booting from a floppy. When booting from a floppy, boot1 plays the same role as boot0 for a harddisk: it locates boot2 and runs it. You may have realized that a file /boot/mbr exists as well. It is a simplified version of boot0. The code in mbr does not provide a menu for the user, it just blindly boots the partition marked active. The code implementing boot2 resides in sys/boot/i386/boot2/, and the executable itself is in /boot. The files boot0 and boot2 that are in /boot are not used by the bootstrap, but by utilities such as boot0cfg. The actual position for boot0 is in the MBR. For boot2 it is the beginning of a bootable FreeBSD slice. These locations are not under the filesystem's control, so they are invisible to commands like ls. The main task for boot2 is to load the file /boot/loader, which is the third stage in the bootstrapping procedure. The code in boot2 cannot use any services like open() and read(), since the kernel is not yet loaded. It must scan the harddisk, knowing about the filesystem structure, find the file /boot/loader, read it into memory using a BIOS service, and then pass the execution to the loader's entry point. Besides that, boot2 prompts for user input so the loader can be booted from different disk, unit, slice and partition. The boot2 binary is created in special way: sys/boot/i386/boot2/Makefile boot2: boot2.ldr boot2.bin ${BTX}/btx/btx btxld -v -E ${ORG2} -f bin -b ${BTX}/btx/btx -l boot2.ldr \ -o boot2.ld -P 1 boot2.bin BTX This Makefile snippet shows that &man.btxld.8; is used to link the binary. BTX, which stands for BooT eXtender, is a piece of code that provides a protected mode environment for the program, called the client, that it is linked with. So boot2 is a BTX client, i.e. it uses the service provided by BTX. linker The btxld utility is the linker. It links two binaries together. The difference between &man.btxld.8; and &man.ld.1; is that ld usually links object files into a shared object or executable, while btxld links an object file with the BTX, producing the binary file suitable to be put on the beginning of the partition for the system boot. boot0 passes the execution to BTX's entry point. BTX then switches the processor to protected mode, and prepares a simple environment before calling the client. This includes: virtual v86 mode virtual v86 mode. That means, the BTX is a v86 monitor. Real mode instructions like pushf, popf, cli, sti, if called by the client, will work. Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT) is set up so all hardware interrupts are routed to the default BIOS's handlers, and interrupt 0x30 is set up to be the syscall gate. Two system calls: exec and exit, are defined: sys/boot/i386/btx/lib/btxsys.s: .set INT_SYS,0x30 # Interrupt number # # System call: exit # __exit: xorl %eax,%eax # BTX system int $INT_SYS # call 0x0 # # System call: exec # __exec: movl $0x1,%eax # BTX system int $INT_SYS # call 0x1 BTX creates a Global Descriptor Table (GDT): sys/boot/i386/btx/btx/btx.s: gdt: .word 0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0 # Null entry .word 0xffff,0x0,0x9a00,0xcf # SEL_SCODE .word 0xffff,0x0,0x9200,0xcf # SEL_SDATA .word 0xffff,0x0,0x9a00,0x0 # SEL_RCODE .word 0xffff,0x0,0x9200,0x0 # SEL_RDATA .word 0xffff,MEM_USR,0xfa00,0xcf# SEL_UCODE .word 0xffff,MEM_USR,0xf200,0xcf# SEL_UDATA .word _TSSLM,MEM_TSS,0x8900,0x0 # SEL_TSS The client's code and data start from address MEM_USR (0xa000), and a selector (SEL_UCODE) points to the client's code segment. The SEL_UCODE descriptor has Descriptor Privilege Level (DPL) 3, which is the lowest privilege level. But the INT 0x30 instruction handler resides in a segment pointed to by the SEL_SCODE (supervisor code) selector, as shown from the code that creates an IDT: mov $SEL_SCODE,%dh # Segment selector init.2: shr %bx # Handle this int? jnc init.3 # No mov %ax,(%di) # Set handler offset mov %dh,0x2(%di) # and selector mov %dl,0x5(%di) # Set P:DPL:type add $0x4,%ax # Next handler So, when the client calls __exec(), the code will be executed with the highest privileges. This allows the kernel to change the protected mode data structures, such as page tables, GDT, IDT, etc later, if needed. boot2 defines an important structure, struct bootinfo. This structure is initialized by boot2 and passed to the loader, and then further to the kernel. Some nodes of this structures are set by boot2, the rest by the loader. This structure, among other information, contains the kernel filename, BIOS harddisk geometry, BIOS drive number for boot device, physical memory available, envp pointer etc. The definition for it is: /usr/include/machine/bootinfo.h struct bootinfo { u_int32_t bi_version; u_int32_t bi_kernelname; /* represents a char * */ u_int32_t bi_nfs_diskless; /* struct nfs_diskless * */ /* End of fields that are always present. */ #define bi_endcommon bi_n_bios_used u_int32_t bi_n_bios_used; u_int32_t bi_bios_geom[N_BIOS_GEOM]; u_int32_t bi_size; u_int8_t bi_memsizes_valid; u_int8_t bi_bios_dev; /* bootdev BIOS unit number */ u_int8_t bi_pad[2]; u_int32_t bi_basemem; u_int32_t bi_extmem; u_int32_t bi_symtab; /* struct symtab * */ u_int32_t bi_esymtab; /* struct symtab * */ /* Items below only from advanced bootloader */ u_int32_t bi_kernend; /* end of kernel space */ u_int32_t bi_envp; /* environment */ u_int32_t bi_modulep; /* preloaded modules */ }; boot2 enters into an infinite loop waiting for user input, then calls load(). If the user does not press anything, the loop breaks by a timeout, so load() will load the default file (/boot/loader). Functions ino_t lookup(char *filename) and int xfsread(ino_t inode, void *buf, size_t nbyte) are used to read the content of a file into memory. /boot/loader is an ELF binary, but where the ELF header is prepended with a.out's struct exec structure. load() scans the loader's ELF header, loading the content of /boot/loader into memory, and passing the execution to the loader's entry: sys/boot/i386/boot2/boot2.c: __exec((caddr_t)addr, RB_BOOTINFO | (opts & RBX_MASK), MAKEBOOTDEV(dev_maj[dsk.type], 0, dsk.slice, dsk.unit, dsk.part), 0, 0, 0, VTOP(&bootinfo)); <application>loader</application> stage loader is a BTX client as well. I will not describe it here in detail, there is a comprehensive manpage written by Mike Smith, &man.loader.8;. The underlying mechanisms and BTX were discussed above. The main task for the loader is to boot the kernel. When the kernel is loaded into memory, it is being called by the loader: sys/boot/common/boot.c: /* Call the exec handler from the loader matching the kernel */ module_formats[km->m_loader]->l_exec(km); Kernel initialization - To where exactly is the execution passed by the loader, - i.e. what is the kernel's actual entry point. Let us take a - look at the command that links the kernel: + Let us take a look at the command that links the kernel. This + will help us identify the exact location where the loader passes + execution to the kernel. This location is the kernel's actual entry + point. sys/conf/Makefile.i386: ld -elf -Bdynamic -T /usr/src/sys/conf/ldscript.i386 -export-dynamic \ -dynamic-linker /red/herring -o kernel -X locore.o \ <lots of kernel .o files> ELF A few interesting things can be seen in this line. First, the kernel is an ELF dynamically linked binary, but the dynamic linker for kernel is /red/herring, which is definitely a bogus file. Second, taking a look at the file sys/conf/ldscript.i386 gives an idea about what ld options are used when compiling a kernel. Reading through the first few lines, the string sys/conf/ldscript.i386: ENTRY(btext) says that a kernel's entry point is the symbol `btext'. This symbol is defined in locore.s: sys/i386/i386/locore.s: .text /********************************************************************** * * This is where the bootblocks start us, set the ball rolling... * */ NON_GPROF_ENTRY(btext) First what is done is the register EFLAGS is set to a predefined value of 0x00000002, and then all the segment registers are initialized: sys/i386/i386/locore.s /* Don't trust what the BIOS gives for eflags. */ pushl $PSL_KERNEL popfl /* * Don't trust what the BIOS gives for %fs and %gs. Trust the bootstrap * to set %cs, %ds, %es and %ss. */ mov %ds, %ax mov %ax, %fs mov %ax, %gs btext calls the routines recover_bootinfo(), identify_cpu(), create_pagetables(), which are also defined in locore.s. Here is a description of what they do: recover_bootinfo This routine parses the parameters to the kernel passed from the bootstrap. The kernel may have been booted in 3 ways: by the loader, described above, by the old disk boot blocks, and by the old diskless boot procedure. This function determines the booting method, and stores the struct bootinfo structure into the kernel memory. identify_cpu This functions tries to find out what CPU it is running on, storing the value found in a variable _cpu. create_pagetables This function allocates and fills out a Page Table Directory at the top of the kernel memory area. The next steps are enabling VME, if the CPU supports it: testl $CPUID_VME, R(_cpu_feature) jz 1f movl %cr4, %eax orl $CR4_VME, %eax movl %eax, %cr4 Then, enabling paging: /* Now enable paging */ movl R(_IdlePTD), %eax movl %eax,%cr3 /* load ptd addr into mmu */ movl %cr0,%eax /* get control word */ orl $CR0_PE|CR0_PG,%eax /* enable paging */ movl %eax,%cr0 /* and let's page NOW! */ The next three lines of code are because the paging was set, so the jump is needed to continue the execution in virtualized address space: pushl $begin /* jump to high virtualized address */ ret /* now running relocated at KERNBASE where the system is linked to run */ begin: The function init386() is called, with a pointer to the first free physical page, after that mi_startup(). init386 is an architecture dependent initialization function, and mi_startup() is an architecture independent one (the 'mi_' prefix stands for Machine Independent). The kernel never returns from mi_startup(), and by calling it, the kernel finishes booting: sys/i386/i386/locore.s: movl physfree, %esi pushl %esi /* value of first for init386(first) */ call _init386 /* wire 386 chip for unix operation */ call _mi_startup /* autoconfiguration, mountroot etc */ hlt /* never returns to here */ <function>init386()</function> init386() is defined in sys/i386/i386/machdep.c and performs low-level initialization, specific to the i386 chip. The switch to protected mode was performed by the loader. The loader has created the very first task, in which the kernel continues to operate. Before running straight away to the code, I will enumerate the tasks the processor must complete to initialize protected mode execution: Initialize the kernel tunable parameters, passed from the bootstrapping program. Prepare the GDT. Prepare the IDT. Initialize the system console. Initialize the DDB, if it is compiled into kernel. Initialize the TSS. Prepare the LDT. Set up proc0's pcb. parameters What init386() first does is initialize the tunable parameters passed from bootstrap. This is done by setting the environment pointer (envp) and calling init_param1(). The envp pointer has been passed from loader in the bootinfo structure: sys/i386/i386/machdep.c: kern_envp = (caddr_t)bootinfo.bi_envp + KERNBASE; /* Init basic tunables, hz etc */ init_param1(); init_param1() is defined in sys/kern/subr_param.c. That file has a number of sysctls, and two functions, init_param1() and init_param2(), that are called from init386(): sys/kern/subr_param.c hz = HZ; TUNABLE_INT_FETCH("kern.hz", &hz); TUNABLE_<typename>_FETCH is used to fetch the value from the environment: /usr/src/sys/sys/kernel.h #define TUNABLE_INT_FETCH(path, var) getenv_int((path), (var)) Sysctl kern.hz is the system clock tick. Along with this, the following sysctls are set by init_param1(): kern.maxswzone, kern.maxbcache, kern.maxtsiz, kern.dfldsiz, kern.maxdsiz, kern.dflssiz, kern.maxssiz, kern.sgrowsiz. Global Descriptors Table (GDT) Then init386() prepares the Global Descriptors Table (GDT). Every task on an x86 is running in its own virtual address space, and this space is addressed by a segment:offset pair. Say, for instance, the current instruction to be executed by the processor lies at CS:EIP, then the linear virtual address for that instruction would be the virtual address of code segment CS + EIP. For convenience, segments begin at virtual address 0 and end at a 4Gb boundary. Therefore, the instruction's linear virtual address for this example would just be the value of EIP. Segment registers such as CS, DS etc are the selectors, i.e. indexes, into GDT (to be more precise, an index is not a selector itself, but the INDEX field of a selector). FreeBSD's GDT holds descriptors for 15 selectors per CPU: sys/i386/i386/machdep.c: union descriptor gdt[NGDT * MAXCPU]; /* global descriptor table */ sys/i386/include/segments.h: /* * Entries in the Global Descriptor Table (GDT) */ #define GNULL_SEL 0 /* Null Descriptor */ #define GCODE_SEL 1 /* Kernel Code Descriptor */ #define GDATA_SEL 2 /* Kernel Data Descriptor */ #define GPRIV_SEL 3 /* SMP Per-Processor Private Data */ #define GPROC0_SEL 4 /* Task state process slot zero and up */ #define GLDT_SEL 5 /* LDT - eventually one per process */ #define GUSERLDT_SEL 6 /* User LDT */ #define GTGATE_SEL 7 /* Process task switch gate */ #define GBIOSLOWMEM_SEL 8 /* BIOS low memory access (must be entry 8) */ #define GPANIC_SEL 9 /* Task state to consider panic from */ #define GBIOSCODE32_SEL 10 /* BIOS interface (32bit Code) */ #define GBIOSCODE16_SEL 11 /* BIOS interface (16bit Code) */ #define GBIOSDATA_SEL 12 /* BIOS interface (Data) */ #define GBIOSUTIL_SEL 13 /* BIOS interface (Utility) */ #define GBIOSARGS_SEL 14 /* BIOS interface (Arguments) */ Note that those #defines are not selectors themselves, but just a field INDEX of a selector, so they are exactly the indices of the GDT. for example, an actual selector for the kernel code (GCODE_SEL) has the value 0x08. Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT) The next step is to initialize the Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT). This table is to be referenced by the processor when a software or hardware interrupt occurs. For example, to make a system call, user application issues the INT 0x80 instruction. This is a software interrupt, so the processor's hardware looks up a record with index 0x80 in the IDT. This record points to the routine that handles this interrupt, in this particular case, this will be the kernel's syscall gate. The IDT may have a maximum of 256 (0x100) records. The kernel allocates NIDT records for the IDT, where NIDT is the maximum (256): sys/i386/i386/machdep.c: static struct gate_descriptor idt0[NIDT]; struct gate_descriptor *idt = &idt0[0]; /* interrupt descriptor table */ For each interrupt, an appropriate handler is set. The syscall gate for INT 0x80 is set as well: sys/i386/i386/machdep.c: setidt(0x80, &IDTVEC(int0x80_syscall), SDT_SYS386TGT, SEL_UPL, GSEL(GCODE_SEL, SEL_KPL)); So when a userland application issues the INT 0x80 instruction, control will transfer to the function _Xint0x80_syscall, which is in the kernel code segment and will be executed with supervisor privileges. Console and DDB are then initialized: DDB sys/i386/i386/machdep.c: cninit(); /* skipped */ #ifdef DDB kdb_init(); if (boothowto & RB_KDB) Debugger("Boot flags requested debugger"); #endif The Task State Segment is another x86 protected mode structure, the TSS is used by the hardware to store task information when a task switch occurs. The Local Descriptors Table is used to reference userland code and data. Several selectors are defined to point to the LDT, they are the system call gates and the user code and data selectors: /usr/include/machine/segments.h #define LSYS5CALLS_SEL 0 /* forced by intel BCS */ #define LSYS5SIGR_SEL 1 #define L43BSDCALLS_SEL 2 /* notyet */ #define LUCODE_SEL 3 #define LSOL26CALLS_SEL 4 /* Solaris >= 2.6 system call gate */ #define LUDATA_SEL 5 /* separate stack, es,fs,gs sels ? */ /* #define LPOSIXCALLS_SEL 5*/ /* notyet */ #define LBSDICALLS_SEL 16 /* BSDI system call gate */ #define NLDT (LBSDICALLS_SEL + 1) Next, proc0's Process Control Block (struct pcb) structure is initialized. proc0 is a struct proc structure that describes a kernel process. It is always present while the kernel is running, therefore it is declared as global: sys/kern/kern_init.c: struct proc proc0; The structure struct pcb is a part of a proc structure. It is defined in /usr/include/machine/pcb.h and has a process's information specific to the i386 architecture, such as registers values. <function>mi_startup()</function> This function performs a bubble sort of all the system initialization objects and then calls the entry of each object one by one: sys/kern/init_main.c: for (sipp = sysinit; *sipp; sipp++) { /* ... skipped ... */ /* Call function */ (*((*sipp)->func))((*sipp)->udata); /* ... skipped ... */ } Although the sysinit framework is described in the Developers' Handbook, I will discuss the internals of it. sysinit objects Every system initialization object (sysinit object) is created by calling a SYSINIT() macro. Let us take as example an announce sysinit object. This object prints the copyright message: sys/kern/init_main.c: static void print_caddr_t(void *data __unused) { printf("%s", (char *)data); } SYSINIT(announce, SI_SUB_COPYRIGHT, SI_ORDER_FIRST, print_caddr_t, copyright) The subsystem ID for this object is SI_SUB_COPYRIGHT (0x0800001), which comes right after the SI_SUB_CONSOLE (0x0800000). So, the copyright message will be printed out first, just after the console initialization. Let us take a look at what exactly the macro SYSINIT() does. It expands to a C_SYSINIT() macro. The C_SYSINIT() macro then expands to a static struct sysinit structure declaration with another DATA_SET macro call: /usr/include/sys/kernel.h: #define C_SYSINIT(uniquifier, subsystem, order, func, ident) \ static struct sysinit uniquifier ## _sys_init = { \ subsystem, \ order, \ func, \ ident \ }; \ DATA_SET(sysinit_set,uniquifier ## _sys_init); #define SYSINIT(uniquifier, subsystem, order, func, ident) \ C_SYSINIT(uniquifier, subsystem, order, \ (sysinit_cfunc_t)(sysinit_nfunc_t)func, (void *)ident) The DATA_SET() macro expands to a MAKE_SET(), and that macro is the point where the all sysinit magic is hidden: /usr/include/linker_set.h #define MAKE_SET(set, sym) \ static void const * const __set_##set##_sym_##sym = &sym; \ __asm(".section .set." #set ",\"aw\""); \ __asm(".long " #sym); \ __asm(".previous") #endif #define TEXT_SET(set, sym) MAKE_SET(set, sym) #define DATA_SET(set, sym) MAKE_SET(set, sym) In our case, the following declaration will occur: static struct sysinit announce_sys_init = { SI_SUB_COPYRIGHT, SI_ORDER_FIRST, (sysinit_cfunc_t)(sysinit_nfunc_t) print_caddr_t, (void *) copyright }; static void const *const __set_sysinit_set_sym_announce_sys_init = &announce_sys_init; __asm(".section .set.sysinit_set" ",\"aw\""); __asm(".long " "announce_sys_init"); __asm(".previous"); The first __asm instruction will create an ELF section within the kernel's executable. This will happen at kernel link time. The section will have the name .set.sysinit_set. The content of this section is one 32-bit value, the address of announce_sys_init structure, and that is what the second __asm is. The third __asm instruction marks the end of a section. If a directive with the same section name occurred before, the content, i.e. the 32-bit value, will be appended to the existing section, so forming an array of 32-bit pointers. Running objdump on a kernel binary, you may notice the presence of such small sections: &prompt.user; objdump -h /kernel 7 .set.cons_set 00000014 c03164c0 c03164c0 002154c0 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA 8 .set.kbddriver_set 00000010 c03164d4 c03164d4 002154d4 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA 9 .set.scrndr_set 00000024 c03164e4 c03164e4 002154e4 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA 10 .set.scterm_set 0000000c c0316508 c0316508 00215508 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA 11 .set.sysctl_set 0000097c c0316514 c0316514 00215514 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA 12 .set.sysinit_set 00000664 c0316e90 c0316e90 00215e90 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA This screen dump shows that the size of .set.sysinit_set section is 0x664 bytes, so 0x664/sizeof(void *) sysinit objects are compiled into the kernel. The other sections such as .set.sysctl_set represent other linker sets. By defining a variable of type struct linker_set the content of .set.sysinit_set section will be collected into that variable: sys/kern/init_main.c: extern struct linker_set sysinit_set; /* XXX */ The struct linker_set is defined as follows: /usr/include/linker_set.h: struct linker_set { int ls_length; void *ls_items[1]; /* really ls_length of them, trailing NULL */ }; The first node will be equal to the number of a sysinit objects, and the second node will be a NULL-terminated array of pointers to them. Returning to the mi_startup() discussion, it is must be clear now, how the sysinit objects are being organized. The mi_startup() function sorts them and calls each. The very last object is the system scheduler: /usr/include/sys/kernel.h: enum sysinit_sub_id { SI_SUB_DUMMY = 0x0000000, /* not executed; for linker*/ SI_SUB_DONE = 0x0000001, /* processed*/ SI_SUB_CONSOLE = 0x0800000, /* console*/ SI_SUB_COPYRIGHT = 0x0800001, /* first use of console*/ ... SI_SUB_RUN_SCHEDULER = 0xfffffff /* scheduler: no return*/ }; The system scheduler sysinit object is defined in the file sys/vm/vm_glue.c, and the entry point for that object is scheduler(). That function is actually an infinite loop, and it represents a process with PID 0, the swapper process. The proc0 structure, mentioned before, is used to describe it. The first user process, called init, is created by the sysinit object init: sys/kern/init_main.c: static void create_init(const void *udata __unused) { int error; int s; s = splhigh(); error = fork1(&proc0, RFFDG | RFPROC, &initproc); if (error) panic("cannot fork init: %d\n", error); initproc->p_flag |= P_INMEM | P_SYSTEM; cpu_set_fork_handler(initproc, start_init, NULL); remrunqueue(initproc); splx(s); } SYSINIT(init,SI_SUB_CREATE_INIT, SI_ORDER_FIRST, create_init, NULL) The create_init() allocates a new process by calling fork1(), but does not mark it runnable. When this new process is scheduled for execution by the scheduler, the start_init() will be called. That function is defined in init_main.c. It tries to load and exec the init binary, probing /sbin/init first, then /sbin/oinit, /sbin/init.bak, and finally /stand/sysinstall: sys/kern/init_main.c: static char init_path[MAXPATHLEN] = #ifdef INIT_PATH __XSTRING(INIT_PATH); #else "/sbin/init:/sbin/oinit:/sbin/init.bak:/stand/sysinstall"; #endif