x86-bare-metal-examples/multiboot

Multiboot

1. hello-world
2. osdev

Introduction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiboot_Specification

Standard created by GRUB for booting OSes.

Multiboot files are an extension of ELF files with a special header.

Advantages: GRUB does housekeeping magic for you:

• you can store the OS as a regular file inside a filesystem
• your program starts in 32-bit mode already, not 16 bit real mde

Disadvantages:

• more boilerplate

GRUB leaves the application into a well defined starting state.

It seems that Linux does not implement Multiboot natively, but GRUB supports it as an exception: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17909429/booting-a-non-multiboot-kernel-with-grub2

Use grub-mkrescue to make a multiboot file into a bootable ISO or disk.