Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach

Chapter 5Kernel and User-Level Startup

We saw in Chapter 4 that Open Firmware hands control over to BootX, the Mac OS X bootloader, which performs various operations before the Mac OS X kernel can begin to execute. In this chapter, we continue discussion from the point where the kernel takes over from BootX. We will look at the important events that occur during kernel startup, visit various kernel subsystems, see how they are initialized, see how the kernel launches the first user-space program, and look at the details of user-level startup—up to the point where the system is ready for the user. In doing so, we will come across numerous concepts and terms that have not been introduced so far in this book. In this sense, this chapter makes a ...