Solaris SPARC Boot Architecture

Highlights of these improvements include:
■ Commonality in boot processes on the Solaris SPARC and x86 platforms
■ Commonality in the network boot experience
■ Boot architecture flexibility that enables booting a system from diferent file system types
more easily

 

包含四个步骤：

 

1. OBP Phase

 

OBP: Open Boot PROM

 

读取磁盘的第1-15个扇区，这个区域称为Boot Block，包含File System Reader

 

 

2. Booter Phase

 

这个阶段，Boot Archive被读取并执行。启动程序需要识别文件系统类型，装载Boot Archive的途径可以是

本地磁盘、NFS文件系统或者HTTP下载。

 

 

3. Ramdisk Phase

 

The ramdisk extracts the kernel image from the boot archive and then executes it. To
minimize the size of the ramdisk, in particular, the installation miniroot that resides in the
system's memory, the contents of the miniroot are compressed.  This compression is
performed on a per-file level and is implemented within the individual file system.

 The /usr/sbin/fiocompress utility is then used to compress the file and mark the file as
compressed.

 

 

4.  Kernel phase

 

During this phase, the Solaris OS is initialized and a minimal root file system is mounted

on the ramdisk that was constructed from the boot archive.

The kernel then extracts the remainder of the primary modules from the boot archive,
initializes itself, mounts the real root file system , then discards the boot archive.