kernel presentation at ILUG on Sat.

[Charles Steinkuehler]

James Colannino wrote:
>> It depends on what make target you specified when you built your 
>> kernel. I always use "make dep && make clean bzImage modules 
>> modules_install". This creates a bzip2'd kernel. IIRC, the grub/lilo 
>> boot loader does the uncompressing so if you use bzip2, you need a 
>> boot loader that supports it. 
> 
> 
> Oh ok.  That clears up a lot.  I was under the impression that it was 
> the kernel itself that was doing the uncompressing.  So how exactly is 
> the kernel itself (uncompressed) constructed?  I assume many different C 
> programs are being mashed together into one giant binary, or is the 
> image comprised of many binary files which are simply read into memory 
> consecutively to form one large runtime monolithic kernel?

<ugh>  See previous e-mails.  The kernel does decompress itself into 
memory.  There are many C (and assembly) programs "mashed together" to 
form the kernel binary, but everything is rolled into the single bzImage 
(or zImage) file.

The only loading of seperate binary files to form "one large rutnime 
monolithic kernel" that occurs is if you load kernel modules at runtime, 
and I think even then they'd be considered kernel modules, rather than 
part of a monolithic kernel, as they can still be unloaded.

-- 
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net