FreeBSD Boot process

A couple of pointers to man pages that will help you follow the FreeBSD boot process. For the best explanation of all the stuff that appears when you boot FreeBSD, I will refer you to Chapter 29 "Starting and stopping the system" of The Complete FreeBSD, 4^th edtion. It has a great explanation of what the system does during boot, how it goes through the process, what it is telling you and how to configure it (note: I helped proofread it and got a free copy of the book, but trust me, it's worth paying for!).

This is a description of the boot process in the man pages. Start here, read it and check out the "See Also" links: boot


Here's how to tell the boot loader the options to use and even the kernal to load the next time you restart the system: nextboot


The final stage of the "bootstrap", is the loader(8)


If you use the builtin boot manager, you can use this program to configure it: boot0cfg(8)