Chapter 22. Managing the Boot Process and Other Services

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding the Boot Process

• System Services and Runlevels

• Controlling Services at Boot with the YaST Runlevel Editor

• Manually Starting and Stopping Services

• System Monitoring Tools

To begin understanding how your Linux computer works, you need to know how it starts. Booting in Linux is a three-step process, as the computer's basic input/output system (BIOS) starts the machine's hardware without a care as to what operating system its owner (you) wants to run.

It hands control over the machine to a boot manager (such as LILO or GRUB), which does care about finding at least one operating system on the machine.

Finally, you tell the boot manager what file system to run, and it does. The Linux kernel then manages the rest of the session.

In this chapter, you learn exactly what you need to know about the Linux boot process. Some of this information applies to other operating systems, but in this chapter, we focus on starting up and booting SUSE Linux.

Determining which services run in a Linux box partly depends on what kind of Linux box it is. Its system state, or runlevel, controls what starts and what doesn't. Ultimately, you have the power, as SuperUser, to define which services run when.

You'll walk through a boot process to see exactly what happens when your computer starts up. You will use the YaST Runlevel Editor to manage services. You'll also look at some of the tools you can use to monitor your system and keep it in tip-top shape.