Ok, vmlinuz comes from the old naming scheme on vendor unixes for their
kernels. They are/were called vmunix. So ours was called vmlinux. Now
kernels are built already gzipped, and the first part of the boot sequence
includes loading the compressed kernel into memory and decompressing it.
This is all done by the kernel. If you read the message at boot time,
it says something like "decompressing kernel....", "ok, boot." So zImage
came from the make file when you'd say "make zImage" to get a gzipped
kernel. If you don't want a compressed kernel, just say "make linux", or
"make vmlinux", or something like that. So then the kernel got a little
too big for some of us, and bzImage was created. I don't know exactly how
it differes from the zImage, but it allows you to build a larger kernel
image.
-CJO-
On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, dave m mehler wrote:
>Hello,
> I've got a question reguarding kernel terminology. What is the
>difference between vmlinuz and bzImage and zimage?
>Thanks.
>Dave.
>
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C.J. Oster (Linux Guru/Surge Addict)
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