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Bootstrapping and kernel initialization
FreeBSD Developers' Handbook
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Chapter 9 Bootstrapping and kernel initialization

Table of Contents
9.1 Synopsis
9.2 Overview
9.3 BIOS POST
9.4 boot0 stage
9.5 boot2 stage
9.6 loader stage
9.7 Kernel initialization
Contributed by Sergey Lyubka.

9.1 Synopsis

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.

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