Section 2.2. Bootloader


2.2. Bootloader

The bootloader on the PowerPC version of Mac OS X is called BootX, which resides as a single file on the file system. Open Firmware loads it from a bootable device, which could be a locally attached storage device or the network.[5] BootX contains code that runs in the Open Firmware runtime environment. It performs a sequence of steps to arrange for the Mac OS X kernel to run, and it eventually launches the kernel. We will look at the structure and operation of BootX in Section 4.10.

[5] In the context of network booting, we treat the network as a bootable device.

The x86 version of Mac OS X uses a bootloader called boot.efi, which is an executable that runs in the EFI environment. Its purpose and operation are very similar to those of BootX.




Mac OS X Internals. A Systems Approach
Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach
ISBN: 0321278542
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 161
Authors: Amit Singh

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net