How vmlinux is recognized?

[Vikram Narayanan]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Dave Hylands <dhylands at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Vikram,
>
> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Vikram Narayanan <vikram186 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Sorry if this question is stupid.
>> How the vmlinux (an ELF executable) is recognized by the processor?
>> What are the files that are responsible for this?
>
> Well the short answer is that it isn't.
>
> The ELF file is normally just one stage of the process. You still need
> to extract a binary from the ELF, and the binary contains the raw
> executable code that the processor uses.
>
> Normally the boot loader will extract a binary (perhaps from an ELF,
> or perhaps from a raw binary image) and this is what the processor
> sees.
So in case of x86, say Grub will be taking care of this extraction. Right?
If, so the grub code will have the mechanisms for extracting the raw
binary from ELF.
Am i right?

-
Thanks,
Vikram