How vmlinux is recognized?

[Vikram Narayanan]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:51 AM, Mulyadi Santosa
<mulyadi.santosa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 03:11, Vikram Narayanan <vikram186 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yes. I agree. But how who converts the ELF binary to raw binary so
>> that the processor understands. Or how is it actually done?
>
> OK I try my best to understand your question :)
>
> i think I got it...you probably guessed that vmlinux created first,
> then vmlinuz... AFAIK, it's the other way around...or more precisely,
> not both.

I think you got it wrong. I will try to put my question more elaborately.
1) The system is on and BIOS code runs. It gives the control to the
boot loader, say GRUB.
2) Grub picks up the kernel from the specific partition. (i.e a
vmlinuz image), which denotes that it is compressed.
3) There are uncompression routines in the kernel itself, If I am not
wrong. So the kernel uncompresses itself.
4) Now the uncompressed thing is the vmlinux image, right?
5) The vmlinux is in ELF format. Correct?
6) If the OS boots and if u try to run an ELF file, the loader knows
how to load that in the RAM. (I mean it knows how to interpret the ELF
format)
7) Coming back to the vmlinux image, Who takes care of the loading activity.?
8) Who recognizes that the image is ELF format and do the necessary
things accordingly.?

Hope I have my question clear now.

-
Thanks,
Vikram