Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Drive asignments for sata drives

[dustin@v.igoro.us]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 05:31:44PM +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > Not to be picky, but it's the kernel that parses that command line --
> > grub just supplies it to the kernel.
> 
> Are you sure? It seems to me that the "root=" parameter is to grub, to tell 
> it where to find the kernel to which to pass the remaining arguments.

Yep.

kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.15-gentoo-r7-2006040301 root=/dev/sda2

The first argument, /boot/kernel-2.6.15-gentoo-r7-2006040301, is to
grub, and tells it where to find the kernel.  It then laods the kernel
(and any initrd, etc.) and passes the rest of the stuff along as the
command line -- it's similar to a shell command, where the shell
specially interprets the first component, and the rest is left to the
executable.

You can verify this by messing up your 'root=xxx' line in grub.conf and
rebooting.  The kernel will load to the tune of lots of messages, but
then panic when it looks for its root fs.

FWIW, the same thing applies with the "magic words" used in ISOLINUX:
some of those are flags to the kernel, while others are interpreted by
the rc scripts later (the kernel makes its command line available in
/proc/cmdline).

Dustin
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