UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, 5th Edition

2	Booting and System Management Daemons

“Booting” is the standard term for “starting up a computer.” It’s a shortened form of the word “bootstrapping,” which derives from the notion that the computer has to “pull itself up by its own bootstraps.”

The boot process consists of a few broadly defined tasks:

• Finding, loading, and running bootstrapping code
• Finding, loading, and running the OS kernel
• Running startup scripts and system daemons
• Maintaining process hygiene and managing system state transitions

The activities included in that last bullet point continue as long as the system remains up, so the line between bootstrapping ...