important files under /boot
c&p this from Kernel-Howto:--------------------------------------------------------
9.Kernel Files Information
This section gives a "very brief" and "introduction" to some of the
Linux Kernel System.If you have time you can give one reading.
9.1.vmlinuz and vmlinux
The vmlinuz is the Linux kernel executable. This is located at
/boot/vmlinuz.This can be a soft link to something like
/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-19.8.0
The vmlinux is the uncompressed built kernel,vmlinuz is the
compressed one, that has been made bootable. (Note both names vmlinux
and vmlinuz look same except for last letter z).Generally, you don't
need to worry about vmlinux, it is just an intermediate step.
The kernel usually makes a bzImage, and stores it in arch/i386/boot,
and it is up to the user to copy it to /boot and configure GRUB or
LILO.
9.2.Bootloader Files
______________________________________________________________________
ls -l /boot/*.b
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5824 Sep52002 /boot/boot.b
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 612 Sep52002 /boot/chain.b
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 640 Sep52002 /boot/os2_d.b
______________________________________________________________________
the .b files are "bootloader" files.they are part of the dance
required to get a kernel into memory to begin with.You should NOT
touch them.
9.3.Message File
______________________________________________________________________
ls -l /boot/message*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23108 Sep62002 /boot/message
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21282 Sep62002 /boot/message.ja
______________________________________________________________________
The 'message' file contains the message your bootloader will display,
prompting you to choose an OS.So DO NOT touch it.
9.4.initrd.img
See the Appendix A at ``Description of initrd.img file''.
9.5.bzImage
The bzImage is the compressed kernel image created with command 'make
bzImage' during kernel compile.
9.6.module-info
This is created by utils/modlist.
9.7.config
Everytime you compile and install the kernel image in /boot, you
should also copy the corresponding config file to /boot area, for
documentation and future reference. Do NOT touch or edit these files!!
______________________________________________________________________
ls -l /boot/config-*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 42111 Sep42002 /boot/config-2.4.18-14
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 42328 Jan 26 01:29 /boot/config-2.4.18-19.8.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 51426 Jan 25 22:21 /boot/config-2.4.18-19.8.0BOOT
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 52328 Jan 28 03:22 /boot/config-2.4.18-19.8.0-26mar2003
______________________________________________________________________
9.8.System.map
System.map is a "phone directory" list of function in a particular
buildof a kernel.It is typically a symlink to the System.map of
the currently running kernel.If you use the wrong (or no)
System.map, debugging crashes is harder, but has no other effects.
Without System.map, you may face minor annoyance messages.
Do NOT touch the System.map files.
______________________________________________________________________
ls -ld /boot/System.map*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Jan 26 19:26 /boot/System.map -> System.map-2.4.18-19.8.0custom
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 501166 Sep42002 /boot/System.map-2.4.18-14
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 510786 Jan 26 01:29 /boot/System.map-2.4.18-19.8.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 331213 Jan 25 22:21 /boot/System.map-2.4.18-19.8.0BOOT
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 503246 Jan 26 19:26 /boot/System.map-2.4.18-19.8.0custom
______________________________________________________________________
How The Kernel Symbol Table Is Created ?System.map is produced by
'nm vmlinux' and irrelevant or uninteresting symbols are grepped out,
When you compile the kernel, this file 'System.map' is created at
/usr/src/linux/System.map.Something like below:
______________________________________________________________________
nm /boot/vmlinux-2.4.18-19.8.0 > System.map
# Below is the line from /usr/src/linux/Makefile
nm vmlinux | grep -v '\(compiled\)\|\(\.o$$\)\|\( \)\|\(\.\.ng$$\)\|\(LASHDI\)' | sort > System.map
cp /usr/src/linux/System.map /boot/System.map-2.4.18-14 # For v2.4.18
______________________________________________________________________
From<http://www.dirac.org/linux/systemmap.html>
9.8.1.System.map
There seems to be a dearth of information about the System.map file.
It's really nothing mysterious, and in the scheme of things, it's
really not that important. But a lack of documentation makes it shady.
It's like an earlobe; we all have one, but nobody really knows why.
This is a little web page I cooked up that explains the why.
Note, I'm not out to be 100% correct. For instance, it's possible for
a system to not have /proc filesystem support, but most systems do.
I'm going to assume you "go with the flow" and have a fairly typical
system.
Some of the stuff on oopses comes from Alessandro Rubini's "Linux
Device Drivers" which is where I learned most of what I know about
kernel programming.
9.8.2.What Are Symbols?
In the context of programming, a symbol is the building block of a
program: it is a variable name or a function name. It should be of no
surprise that the kernel has symbols, just like the programs you
write. The difference is, of course, that the kernel is a very
complicated piece of coding and has many, many global symbols.
9.8.3.What Is The Kernel Symbol Table?
The kernel doesn't use symbol names. It's much happier knowing a
variable or function name by the variable or function's address.
Rather than using size_t BytesRead, the kernel prefers to refer to
this variable as (for example) c0343f20.
Humans, on the other hand, do not appreciate names like c0343f20. We
prefer to use something like size_t BytesRead. Normally, this doesn't
present much of a problem. The kernel is mainly written in C, so the
compiler/linker allows us to use symbol names when we code and allows
the kernel to use addresses when it runs. Everyone is happy.
There are situations, however, where we need to know the address of a
symbol (or the symbol for an address). This is done by a symbol table,
and is very similar to how gdb can give you the function name from a
address (or an address from a function name). A symbol table is a
listing of all symbols along with their address. Here is an example of
a symbol table:
______________________________________________________________________
c03441a0 B dmi_broken
c03441a4 B is_sony_vaio_laptop
c03441c0 b dmi_ident
c0344200 b pci_bios_present
c0344204 b pirq_table
c0344208 b pirq_router
c034420c b pirq_router_dev
c0344220 b ascii_buffer
c0344224 b ascii_buf_bytes
______________________________________________________________________
You can see that the variable named dmi_broken is at the kernel
address c03441a0.
9.8.4.What Is The System.map File?
There are 2 files that are used as a symbol table:
1. /proc/ksyms
2. System.map
There. You now know what the System.map file is.
Every time you compile a new kernel, the addresses of various symbol
names are bound to change.
/proc/ksyms is a "proc file" and is created on the fly when a kernel
boots up.Actually, it's not really a file; it's simply a
representation of kernel data which is given the illusion of being a
disk file. If you don't believe me, try finding the filesize of
/proc/ksyms. Therefore, it will always be correct for the kernel that
is currently running..
However, System.map is an actual file on your filesystem. When you
compile a new kernel, your old System.map has wrong symbol
information. A new System.map is generated with each kernel compile
and you need to replace the old copy with your new copy.
9.8.5.What Is An Oops?
What is the most common bug in your homebrewed programs? The segfault.
Good ol' signal 11.
What is the most common bug in the Linux kernel? The segfault. Except
here, the notion of a segfault is much more complicated and can be, as
you can imagine, much more serious. When the kernel dereferences an
invalid pointer, it's not called a segfault -- it's called an "oops".
An oops indicates a kernel bug and should always be reported and
fixed.
Note that an oops is not the same thing as a segfault. Your program
cannot recover from a segfault. The kernel doesn't necessarily have to
be in an unstable state when an oops occurs. The Linux kernel is very
robust; the oops may just kill the current process and leave the rest
of the kernel in a good, solid state.
An oops is not a kernel panic. In a panic, the kernel cannot continue;
the system grinds to a halt and must be restarted. An oops may cause a
panic if a vital part of the system is destroyed. An oops in a device
driver, for example, will almost never cause a panic.
When an oops occurs, the system will print out information that is
relevent to debugging the problem, like the contents of all the CPU
registers, and the location of page descriptor tables. In particular,
the contents of the EIP (instruction pointer) is printed. Like this:
______________________________________________________________________
EIP: 0010:[<00000000>]
Call Trace: [<c010b860>]
______________________________________________________________________
9.8.6.What Does An Oops Have To Do With System.map?
You can agree that the information given in EIP and Call Trace is not
very informative. But more importantly, it's really not informative to
a kernel developer either. Since a symbol doesn't have a fixed
address, c010b860 can point anywhere.
To help us use this cryptic oops output, Linux uses a daemon called
klogd, the kernel logging daemon. klogd intercepts kernel oopses and
logs them with syslogd, changing some of the useless information like
c010b860 with information that humans can use. In other words, klogd
is a kernel message logger which can perform name-address resolution.
Once klogd tranforms the kernel message, it uses whatever logger is in
place to log system wide messages, usually syslogd.
To perform name-address resolution, klogd uses System.map. Now you
know what an oops has to do with System.map.
Fine print: There are actually two types of address resolution are
performed by klogd.
·Static translation, which uses the System.map file.
·Dynamic translation which is used with loadable modules, doesn't
use
System.map and is therefore not relevant to this discussion, but I'll
describe it briefly anyhow.
Klogd Dynamic Translation
Suppose you load a kernel module which generates an oops. An oops
message is generated, and klogd intercepts it. It is found that the
oops occured at d00cf810. Since this address belongs to a dynamically
loaded module, it has no entry in the System.map file. klogd will
search for it, find nothing, and conclude that a loadable module must
have generated the oops. klogd then queries the kernel for symbols
that were exported by loadable modules. Even if the module author
didn't export his symbols, at the very least, klogd will know what
module generated the oops, which is better than knowing nothing about
the oops at all.
There's other software that uses System.map, and I'll get into that
shortly.
9.8.7.Where Should System.map Be Located?
System.map should be located wherever the software that uses it looks
for it.That being said, let me talk about where klogd looks for it.
Upon bootup, if klogd isn't given the location of System.map as an
argument, it will look for System.map in 3 places, in the following
order:
1. /boot/System.map
2. /System.map
3. /usr/src/linux/System.map
System.map also has versioning information, and klogd intelligently
searches for the correct map file. For instance, suppose you're
running kernel 2.4.18 and the associated map file is /boot/System.map.
You now compile a new kernel 2.5.1 in the tree /usr/src/linux. During
the compiling process, the file /usr/src/linux/System.map is created.
When you boot your new kernel, klogd will first look at
/boot/System.map, determine it's not the correct map file for the
booting kernel, then look at /usr/src/linux/System.map, determine that
it is the correct map file for the booting kernel and start reading
the symbols.
A few nota bene's:
·Somewhere during the 2.5.x series, the Linux kernel started to
untar into linux-version, rather than just linux (show of hands --
how many people have been waiting for this to happen?). I don't
know if klogd has been modified to search in /usr/src/linux-
version/System.map yet. TODO: Look at the klogd srouce. If someone
beats me to it, please email me and let me know if klogd has been
modified to look in the new directory name for the linux source
code.
·The man page doesn't tell the whole the story. Look at this:
______________________________________________________________________
# strace -f /sbin/klogd | grep 'System.map'
31208 open("/boot/System.map-2.4.18", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 2
______________________________________________________________________
Apparently, not only does klogd look for the correct version of the
map in the 3 klogd search directories, but klogd also knows to look
for the name "System.map" followed by "-kernelversion", like
System.map-2.4.18. This is undocumented feature of klogd.
A few drivers will need System.map to resolve symbols (since they're
linked against the kernel headers instead of, say, glibc). They will
not work correctly without the System.map created for the particular
kernel you're currently running. This is NOT the same thing as a
module not loading because of a kernel version mismatch. That has to
do with the kernel version, not the kernel symbol table which changes
between kernels of the same version!
9.8.8.What else uses the System.map
Don't think that System.map is only useful for kernel oopses. Although
the kernel itself doesn't really use System.map, other programs such
as klogd, lsof,
______________________________________________________________________
satan# strace lsof 2>&1 1> /dev/null | grep System
readlink("/proc/22711/fd/4", "/boot/System.map-2.4.18", 4095) = 23
______________________________________________________________________
and ps :
______________________________________________________________________
satan# strace ps 2>&1 1> /dev/null | grep System
open("/boot/System.map-2.4.18", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_NOCTTY) = 6
______________________________________________________________________
and many other pieces of software like dosemu require a correct
System.map.
9.8.9.What Happens If I Don't Have A Healthy System.map?
Suppose you have multiple kernels on the same machine. You need a
separate System.map files for each kernel! If boot a kernel that
doesn't have a System.map file, you'll periodically see a message
like: System.map does not match actual kernel Not a fatal error, but
can be annoying to see everytime you do a ps ax. Some software, like
dosemu, may not work correctly (although I don't know of anything off
the top of my head). Lastly, your klogd or ksymoops output will not be
reliable in case of a kernel oops.
9.8.10.How Do I Remedy The Above Situation?
The solution is to keep all your System.map files in /boot and rename
them with the kernel version. Suppose you have multiple kernels like:
·/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.14
·/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.13
Then just rename your map files according to the kernel version and
put them in /boot, like:
______________________________________________________________________
/boot/System.map-2.2.14
/boot/System.map-2.2.13
______________________________________________________________________
Now what if you have two copies of the same kernel? Like:
·/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.14
·/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.14.nosound
The best answer would be if all software looked for the following
files:
______________________________________________________________________
/boot/System.map-2.2.14
/boot/System.map-2.2.14.nosound
______________________________________________________________________
You can also use symlinks:
______________________________________________________________________
System.map-2.2.14
System.map-2.2.14.sound
ln -s System.map-2.2.14.sound System.map # Here System.map -> System.map-2.2.14.sound
______________________________________________________________________
11.Appendix A - Creating initrd.img file
The initrd is the "initial ramdisk".It is enough files stored in a
ramdisk to store needed drivers .You need the drivers so that the
kernel can mount /and kick off init.
You can avoid this if you build your scsi drivers right into the
kernel, instead of into modules. (Many persons recommend this).
11.1.Using mkinitrd
The mkinitrd utility creates an initrd image in a single command. This
is command is peculiar to RedHat. There may be equivalent command of
mkinitrd in other distributions of Linux. This is very convenient
utility.
You can read the mkinitrd man page.
______________________________________________________________________
/sbin/mkinitrd --help # Or simply type 'mkinitrd --help'
usage: mkinitrd [--version] [-v] [-f] [--preload <module>]
[--omit-scsi-modules] [--omit-raid-modules] [--omit-lvm-modules]
[--with=<module>] [--image-version] [--fstab=<fstab>] [--nocompress]
[--builtin=<module>] [--nopivot] <initrd-image> <kernel-version>
(example: mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.2.5-15.img 2.2.5-15)
# Read the online manual page with .....
man mkinitrd
su - root
# The command below creates the initrd image file
mkinitrd./initrd-2.4.18-19.8.0custom.img 2.4.18-19.8.0custom
ls -l initrd-2.4.18-19.8.0custom.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 127314 Mar 19 21:54 initrd-2.4.18-19.8.0custom.img
cp./initrd-2.4.18-19.8.0custom.img /boot
______________________________________________________________________
See the following sections for the manual method of creating an initrd
image.
11.2.Kernel Docs
To create /boot/initrd.img see the documentation at
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/initrd.txt and see also Loopback-Root-
mini-HOWTO <http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Loopback-Root-
FS-3.html#ss3.3>.
11.3.Linuxman Book
A cut from<http://www.linuxman.com.cy/rute/node1.html> chapter 31.7.
SCSI Installation Complications and initrd
Some of the following descriptions may be difficult to understand
without knowledge of kernel modules explained in Chapter 42. You may
want to come back to it later.
Consider a system with zero IDE disks and one SCSI disk containing a
LINUX installation. There are BIOS interrupts to read the SCSI disk,
just as there were for the IDE, so LILO can happily access a kernel
image somewhere inside the SCSI partition. However, the kernel is
going to be lost without a kernel module [See Chapter 42. The kernel
doesn't support every possible kind of hardware out there all by
itself. It is actually divided into a main part (the kernel image
discussed in this chapter) and hundreds of modules (loadable parts
that reside in /lib/modules/) that support the many type of SCSI,
network, sound etc., peripheral devices.] that understands the
particular SCSI driver.So although the kernel can load and execute,
it won't be able to mount its root file system without loading a SCSI
module first. But the module itself resides in the root file system in
/lib/modules/. This is a tricky situation to solve and is done in one
of two ways: either (a) using a kernel with preenabled SCSI support or
(b) using what is known as an initrd preliminary root file system
image.
The first method is what I recommend. It's a straightforward (though
time-consuming) procedure to create a kernel with SCSI support for
your SCSI card built-in (and not in a separate module). Built-in SCSI
and network drivers will also autodetect cards most of the time,
allowing immediate access to the device--they will work without being
given any options and, most importantly,
without your having to read up on how to configure them. This setup is
known as compiled-in support for a hardware driver (as opposed to
module support for the driver). The resulting kernel image will be
larger by an amount equal to the size of module. Chapter 42 discusses
such kernel compiles.
The second method is faster but trickier. LINUX supports what is known
as an initrd image ( initial rAM disk image). This is a small, +1.5
megabyte file system that is loaded by LILO and mounted by the kernel
instead of the real file system. The kernel mounts this file system as
a RAM disk, executes the file /linuxrc, and then only mounts the real
file system.
31.6 Creating an initrd Image
Start by creating a small file system. Make a directory/initrd and
copy the following files into it.
______________________________________________________________________
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 1024 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/bin/
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 436328 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/bin/insmod
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 424680 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/bin/sash
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 5, 1 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/console
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 3 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/null
brw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 1 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/ram
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 4, 0 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/systty
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 4, 1 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/tty1
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 4, 1 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/tty2
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 4, 1 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/tty3
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 4, 1 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/dev/tty4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/etc/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/lib/
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 76 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/linuxrc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Sep 14 20:12 initrd/loopfs/
______________________________________________________________________
On my system, the file initrd/bin/insmod is the statically linked
version copied from
/sbin/insmod.static--a member of the modutils-2.3.13 package.
initrd/bin/sash is a statically linked shell from the sash-3.4
package. You can recompile insmod from source if you don't have a
statically linked version. Alternatively, copy the needed DLLs from
/lib/ to initrd/lib/. (You can get the list of required DLLs by
running ldd /sbin/insmod. Don't forget to also copy symlinks and run
strip -s {lib} to reduce the size of the DLLs.)
Now copy into the initrd/lib/ directory the SCSI modules you require.
For example, if we have an Adaptec AIC-7850 SCSI adapter, we would
require the aic7xxx.o module from
/lib/modules/{version}/scsi/aic7xxx.o. Then, place it in the
initrd/lib/ directory.
______________________________________________________________________
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 129448 Sep 271999 initrd/lib/aic7xxx.o
______________________________________________________________________
The file initrd/linuxrc should contain a script to load all the
modules needed for the kernel to access the SCSI partition. In this
case, just the aic7xxx module [ insmod can take options such as the
IRQ and IO-port for the device.See Chapter 42.]:
______________________________________________________________________
#!/bin/sash
aliasall
echo "Loading aic7xxx module"
insmod /lib/aic7xxx.o
______________________________________________________________________
Now double-check all your permissions and then chroot to the file
system for testing.
______________________________________________________________________
chroot ~/initrd /bin/sash
/linuxrc
______________________________________________________________________
Now, create a file system image similar to that in Section 19.9:
______________________________________________________________________
dd if=/dev/zero of=~/file-inird count=2500 bs=1024
losetup /dev/loop0 ~/file-inird
mke2fs /dev/loop0
mkdir ~/mnt
mount /dev/loop0 ~/mnt
cp -a initrd/* ~/mnt/
umount ~/mnt
losetup -d /dev/loop0
______________________________________________________________________
Finally, gzip the file system to an appropriately named file:
______________________________________________________________________
gzip -c ~/file-inird > initrd-<kernel-version>
______________________________________________________________________
31.7 Modifying lilo.conf for initrd
Your lilo.conf file can be changed slightly to force use of an initrd
file system. Simply add the initrd option. For example:
______________________________________________________________________
boot=/dev/sda
prompt
timeout = 50
compact
vga = extended
linear
image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.17
initrd = /boot/initrd-2.2.17
label = linux
root = /dev/sda1
read-only
______________________________________________________________________
Notice the use of the linear option. This is a BIOS trick that you can
read about in lilo(5). It is often necessary but can make SCSI disks
nonportable to different BIOSs (meaning that you will have to rerun
lilo if you move the disk to a different computer).
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