How vmlinux is recognized?

[Vikram Narayanan]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:15 AM, Mulyadi Santosa
<mulyadi.santosa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 02:31, Vikram Narayanan <vikram186 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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?
>
> you mean, vmlinuz right? the bzImage right? not the vmlinux....
> because that's the one GRUB handles...not vmlinux one...

The vmlinux is an ELF binary. right? If so, Who does the unpacking of
raw binary image from that ELF?

> well, in that case, see this first:
> $ file -k -z  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-31-generic

This is the compressed one. The uncompression is done by the kernel
and not by the grub, If I am not wrong.

> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-31-generic: Linux kernel x86 boot executable
> bzImage, version 2.6.32-31-generic (buildd at rothe, RO-rootFS, root_dev
> 0x801, swap_dev 0x3, Normal VGA\012- x86 boot sector, code offset 0x5
>
> i am sure you will get idea based upon the above file identification,
> on what vmlinuz is and how is it supposed to be treated by boot
> loader....
I am still confused :(

Thanks,
Vikram