BOOTUP(7)                                                             bootup                                                             BOOTUP(7)

NAME

       bootup - System bootup process

DESCRIPTION

       A number of different components are involved in the system boot. Immediately after power-up, the system BIOS will do minimal hardware
       initialization, and hand control over to a boot loader stored on a persistent storage device. This boot loader will then invoke an OS
       kernel from disk (or the network). In the Linux case, this kernel (optionally) extracts and executes an initial RAM disk image (initrd),
       such as generated by dracut(8), which looks for the root file system (possibly using systemd(1) for this). After the root file system is
       found and mounted, the initrd hands over control to the host's system manager (such as systemd(1)) stored on the OS image, which is then
       responsible for probing all remaining hardware, mounting all necessary file systems and spawning all configured services.

       On shutdown, the system manager stops all services, unmounts all file systems (detaching the storage technologies backing them), and then
       (optionally) jumps back into the initrd code which unmounts/detaches the root file system and the storage it resides on. As a last step,
       the system is powered down.

       Additional information about the system boot process may be found in boot(7).

SYSTEM MANAGER BOOTUP

       At boot, the system manager on the OS image is responsible for initializing the required file systems, services and drivers that are
       necessary for operation of the system. On systemd(1) systems, this process is split up in various discrete steps which are exposed as
       target units. (See systemd.target(5) for detailed information about target units.) The boot-up process is highly parallelized so that the
       order in which specific target units are reached is not deterministic, but still adheres to a limited amount of ordering structure.

       When systemd starts up the system, it will activate all units that are dependencies of default.target (as well as recursively all
       dependencies of these dependencies). Usually, default.target is simply an alias of graphical.target or multi-user.target, depending on
       whether the system is configured for a graphical UI or only for a text console. To enforce minimal ordering between the units pulled in, a
       number of well-known target units are available, as listed on systemd.special(7).

       The following chart is a structural overview of these well-known units and their position in the boot-up logic. The arrows describe which
       units are pulled in and ordered before which other units. Units near the top are started before units nearer to the bottom of the chart.

           local-fs-pre.target
                    |
                    v
           (various mounts and   (various swap   (various cryptsetup
            fsck services...)     devices...)        devices...)       (various low-level   (various low-level
                    |                  |                  |             services: udevd,     API VFS mounts:
                    v                  v                  v             tmpfiles, random     mqueue, configfs,
             local-fs.target      swap.target     cryptsetup.target    seed, sysctl, ...)      debugfs, ...)
                    |                  |                  |                    |                    |
                    \__________________|_________________ | ___________________|____________________/
                                                         |/
                                                          v
                                                   sysinit.target
                                                          |
                     ____________________________________/|\________________________________________
                    /                  |                  |                    |                    
                    |                  |                  |                    |                    |
                    v                  v                  |                    v                    v
                (various           (various               |                (various          rescue.service
               timers...)          paths...)              |               sockets...)               |
                    |                  |                  |                    |                    v
                    v                  v                  |                    v              rescue.target
              timers.target      paths.target             |             sockets.target
                    |                  |                  |                    |
                    v                  \_________________ | ___________________/
                                                         |/
                                                          v
                                                    basic.target
                                                          |
                     ____________________________________/|                                 emergency.service
                    /                  |                  |                                         |
                    |                  |                  |                                         v
                    v                  v                  v                                 emergency.target
                display-        (various system    (various system
            manager.service         services           services)
                    |             required for            |
                    |            graphical UIs)           v
                    |                  |           multi-user.target
                    |                  |                  |
                    \_________________ | _________________/
                                      |/
                                       v
                             graphical.target

       Target units that are commonly used as boot targets are emphasized. These units are good choices as goal targets, for example by passing
       them to the systemd.unit= kernel command line option (see systemd(1)) or by symlinking default.target to them.

       timers.target is pulled-in by basic.target asynchronously. This allows timers units to depend on services which become only available later
       in boot.

BOOTUP IN THE INITIAL RAM DISK (INITRD)
       The initial RAM disk implementation (initrd) can be set up using systemd as well. In this case, boot up inside the initrd follows the
       following structure.

       The default target in the initrd is initrd.target. The bootup process begins identical to the system manager bootup (see above) until it
       reaches basic.target. From there, systemd approaches the special target initrd.target. Before any file systems are mounted, it must be
       determined whether the system will resume from hibernation or proceed with normal boot. This is accomplished by
       systemd-hibernate-resume@.service which must be finished before local-fs-pre.target, so no filesystems can be mounted before the check is
       complete. When the root device becomes available, initd-root-device.target is reached. If the root device can be mounted at /sysroot, the
       sysroot.mount unit becomes active and initrd-root-fs.target is reached. The service initrd-parse-etc.service scans /sysroot/etc/fstab for a
       possible /usr mount point and additional entries marked with the x-initrd.mount option. All entries found are mounted below /sysroot, and
       initrd-fs.target is reached. The service initrd-cleanup.service isolates to the initrd-switch-root.target, where cleanup services can run.
       As the very last step, the initrd-switch-root.service is activated, which will cause the system to switch its root to /sysroot.

                                                          : (beginning identical to above)
                                                          :
                                                          v
                                                    basic.target
                                                          |                                 emergency.service
                                   ______________________/|                                         |
                                  /                       |                                         v
                                  |            initrd-root-device.target                    emergency.target
                                  |                       |
                                  |                       v
                                  |                  sysroot.mount
                                  |                       |
                                  |                       v
                                  |             initrd-root-fs.target
                                  |                       |
                                  |                       v
                                  v            initrd-parse-etc.service
                           (custom initrd                 |
                            services...)                  v
                                  |            (sysroot-usr.mount and
                                  |             various mounts marked
                                  |               with fstab option
                                  |              x-initrd.mount...)
                                  |                       |
                                  |                       v
                                  |                initrd-fs.target
                                  \______________________ |
                                                         |
                                                          v
                                                     initrd.target
                                                          |
                                                          v
                                                initrd-cleanup.service
                                                     isolates to
                                               initrd-switch-root.target
                                                          |
                                                          v
                                   ______________________/|
                                  /                       v
                                  |        initrd-udevadm-cleanup-db.service
                                  v                       |
                           (custom initrd                 |
                            services...)                  |
                                  \______________________ |
                                                         |
                                                          v
                                              initrd-switch-root.target
                                                          |
                                                          v
                                              initrd-switch-root.service
                                                          |
                                                          v
                                                Transition to Host OS

SYSTEM MANAGER SHUTDOWN

       System shutdown with systemd also consists of various target units with some minimal ordering structure applied:

                                             (conflicts with  (conflicts with
                                               all system     all file system
                                                services)     mounts, swaps,
                                                    |           cryptsetup
                                                    |          devices, ...)
                                                    |                |
                                                    v                v
                                             shutdown.target    umount.target
                                                    |                |
                                                    \_______   ______/
                                                             /
                                                             v
                                                    (various low-level
                                                         services)
                                                             |
                                                             v
                                                       final.target
                                                             |
                       _____________________________________/ \_________________________________
                      /                         |                        |                      
                      |                         |                        |                      |
                      v                         v                        v                      v
           systemd-reboot.service   systemd-poweroff.service   systemd-halt.service   systemd-kexec.service
                      |                         |                        |                      |
                      v                         v                        v                      v
               reboot.target             poweroff.target            halt.target           kexec.target

       Commonly used system shutdown targets are emphasized.

SEE ALSO

       systemd(1), boot(7), systemd.special(7), systemd.target(5), dracut(8)

systemd 237                                                                                                                              BOOTUP(7)