Re: Where does 'vmlinuz' come from?

Doug McNaught (doug@wireboard.com)
12 Dec 2001 20:47:51 -0500


Alon Altman <alon@vipe.technion.ac.il> writes:

> On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, J Sloan wrote:
>
> > Pozsar Balazs wrote:
> >
> > > This is not a bugreport, but a simple question: :)
> > > where does the term vmlinuz come from?
> >
> > compressed vmlinux = vmlinux.z -> vmlinuz?
>
> Yes, but I think he wanted to know where 'vmlinux' came from... what does
> the "vm" stand for? Virtual Memory?

Yes. The kernel binary on ancient AT&T versions was called 'unix'.
When Berkeley wrote a new kernel with virtual memory, they called it
'vmunix'. So naturally the Linux kernel is 'vmlinux' and the
compressed version is 'vmlinuz' as above.

-Doug

-- 
Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
   --T. J. Jackson, 1863
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