Скачать или смотреть Boot Directory Explained (also Linux boot process)

/boot is an important folder in Linux. /boot folder contains all the boot related info files and folders such as grub.conf, vmlinuz image aka kernel etc.

/boot/initrd-2.6.18-194.17.1 img file: Initrd in other words called as Initializing RAM Disk which loads temporary file system in to RAM at the time of booting process before actual file system mounting. This file is loaded by your kernel image file at the time of booting. This initrd image knows only one configuration file /etc/inittab file. The inittab file contains what are run levels, what init has to do in each run level and what is the default runlevel etc.


/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.17.1 file: vmlinuz is a compressed Linux Kernel image which is used at the time of booting Linux operating system. Vmlinuz stands for virtual memory Linux kernel zipped.

/boot/System.map-2.6.18-194.17.1.el file: This is a map file used by kernel. This file contains memory location mapped to the kernel variables or functions. Again this file is used by vmlinuz kernel image at the time of booting to set symbol names.

/boot/grub/grub.conf : This file is used for boot loader grub to load grub related configuration so that this is used at the time of booting.