> By "the boot process," what, specifically do you
> mean, and which processor are you curious about the
> boot process on?

I was thinking of a thorough overview of what happens since the machine 
finishes the POST (sorry, does SPARC have a POST too?) and starts loading code 
from the disk until the Solaris kernel's entry point is called (by the way, 
which function is THE kernel entry point? Is it the startup routine you mention 
below?). I know this is an area where there are many machine specifics, but I 
am not interested in a particular processor, rather I would like a roadmap of 
where to look in the code to discover this for different processors (and then 
to conclude how it would be for a new processor, like the PPC). This could be 
really high-level, provided there are pointers into the code.

> The initial load of Solaris from the boot device is
> handled differently on SPARC and x86, with the former
> using Open Firmware and the latter now using GRUB.

Ok. I suppose there might be system dependencies, but at some moment, the 
kernel is loaded and gets its chance to execute. I want to understand how the 
different parts of the kernel take turns to bring the system up and which is 
the so to speak ¨main¨ module, that loads the others. Also in this context, I 
want to know which module handles the device tree and its configuration. I know 
this is obvious from reading the code, but I would like a shortcut so that I 
don't spend the next 5 years finding my way through all the sources and lose 
sight of what I was searching for at first.

> If you're talking about what Solaris does to
> initialize the system once it's been loaded, your
> best bet is to start following the code path
> beginning at the routine startup().
Thanks for this pointer.

-- Douglas
 
 
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