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

This system administration enhancement is new in the Developer 5/07 release.

Starting with this 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.

Other additions and modifications to GRUB based booting include:

• The addition of two new keywords, kernel$ and module$.

  These keywords assist in the creation of menu.lst file entries that work with both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

• The bootadm command has also been modified to create GRUB menu.lst file entries that contain the platform-specific unix module, which is now loaded directly by GRUB.

  During a software upgrade, the bootadm command converts any multiboot entries in the menu.lst file to directly refer to the unix kernel module. For more information, see the boot(1M) and bootadm(1M) man pages.

  For step-by-step instructions, see Chapter 11, Modifying Solaris Boot Behavior (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration and Booting an x86 Based System by Using GRUB (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.