Porting Unix to the 386: A Practical Approach

William & Lynne Jolitz

Started open source UNIX.

Appeared in part as a 17 article magazine series in 1991-1992.

Documented the "how, what, why, who, when" of porting BSD to the 386.

Done while BSD was becoming "open source".

Porting Unix to the 386: A Practical Approach - server processes

server processes:

The Role of the Root Filesystem

The root filesystem is a small, essential portion of disk storage, providing functionality to expand its resources to use storage other than the root itself, and configure system operations. The root usually survives intact when a system crash occurs, allowing system operation during recovery.

Initialization: /sbin/init, /dev/console, and /bin/sh

With the kernel running, we do a "high level bootstrap" to initialize the operating system, by executing certain programs located in the root filesystem.