x86: GRUB Extended Support for Directly Loading and Booting the UNIX Kernel

Starting with the Solaris Express Developer Edition 5/07 release, changes have been made to GRUB that enable the boot loader to directly load and boot the unix kernel. The GRUB multiboot module is no longer used. This implementation integrates the previous multiboot functionality directly into the platform-specific unix kernel module. These changes reduce the time, as well as memory requirements, that are needed to boot the Solaris OS.

Two new keywords, kernel$ and module$, have been added to GRUB to assist in creating menu.lst entries that work with either 32-bit or 64-bit systems. Another new keyword, $ISADIR, displays 32–bit and 64–bit information in the boot command. In addition, the bootadm command that manages the menu.lst file has been modified to create file entries for the platform-specific unix module that is loaded by GRUB. During an upgrade, the bootadm command converts any existing multiboot menu.lst entries to unix entries.

These new keywords are used in normal installations. However, the miniroot is 32-bit only. Therefore, failsafe installations do not use the new keywords.

For overview and task-related information, see Chapter 11, Administering the GRUB Bootloader (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration. See also Chapter 12, Booting a Solaris System With GRUB (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

For more information, see the boot(1M) and bootadm(1M) man pages.