multiboot specification and multiboot header

This specification adopts a compromise solution to this problem. Multiboot-compliant OS images always contain a magic Multiboot header (see OS image format), which allows the boot loader to load the image without having to understand numerous a.out variants or other executable formats. This magic header does not need to be at the very beginning of the executable file, so kernel images can still conform to the local a.out format variant in addition to being Multiboot-compliant.

An OS image may be an ordinary 32-bit executable file in the standard format for that particular operating system, except that it may be linked at a non-default load address to avoid loading on top of the PC’s I/O region or other reserved areas, and of course it should not use shared libraries or other fancy features.

An OS image must contain an additional header called Multiboot header, besides the headers of the format used by the OS image. The Multiboot header must be contained completely within the first 8192 bytes of the OS image, and must be longword (32-bit) aligned. In general, it should come as early as possible, and may be embedded in the beginning of the text segment after the real executable header.

The layout of the Multiboot header must be as follows:

Offset	Type	Field Name	Note
0	u32	magic	required
4	u32	flags	required
8	u32	checksum	required
12	u32	header_addr	if flags[16] is set
16	u32	load_addr	if flags[16] is set
20	u32	load_end_addr	if flags[16] is set
24	u32	bss_end_addr	if flags[16] is set
28	u32	entry_addr	if flags[16] is set
32	u32	mode_type	if flags[2] is set
36	u32	width	if flags[2] is set
40	u32	height	if flags[2] is set
44	u32	depth	if flags[2] is set

The field ‘magic’ is the magic number identifying the header, which must be the hexadecimal value 0x1BADB002.

The field ‘flags’ specifies features that the OS image requests or requires of an boot loader.

The field ‘checksum’ is a 32-bit unsigned value which, when added to the other magic fields (i.e. ‘magic’ and ‘flags’), must have a 32-bit unsigned sum of zero.