2. Boot, Service Management, and Shutdown

This chapter describes how the Solaris 10 operating system boots and explains options users and administrators have for changing the boot process. The chapter also describes the two methods of shutting down a Solaris 10 system. In addition, it describes the Service Management Facility (SMF) utility for managing system services. Some of the information in this chapter describes Solaris boot processes that apply to both the x86 and SPARC platform, but the chapter focuses primarily on booting the x86 platform.

2.1 Boot

Like most contemporary operating systems, Solaris initialization begins with the bootloader, continues with the kernel, and finishes with user-mode programs.

2.1.1 The Bootloader

On x86 ...

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