Provided by: systemd_237-3ubuntu10.57_amd64 
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)