Network Bootable Image (NBI) is a legacy format that wraps operating system images to makes it possible for Etherboot to load the images directly. NBI format is able to combine kernel, file system and various boot parameters, such as location of remote file system or server IP address, into one bootable file. [1]
ISO 9660 is a file system for optical disc media. The file system is an international standard available from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Since the specification is available for anybody to purchase, implementations have been written for many operating systems.
GNU GRUB is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Free Software Foundation's Multiboot Specification, which provides a user the choice to boot one of multiple operating systems installed on a computer or select a specific kernel configuration available on a particular operating system's partitions.
A live CD is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading from a hard disk drive. A live CD allows users to run an operating system for any purpose without installing it or making any changes to the computer's configuration. Live CDs can run on a computer without secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive, or with a corrupted hard disk drive or file system, allowing data recovery.
An optical disc image is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. ISO images are expected to contain the binary image of an optical media file system, including the data in its files in binary format, copied exactly as they were stored on the disc. The data inside the ISO image will be structured according to the file system that was used on the optical disc from which it was created.
SystemRescue is a Linux distribution for x86 64 and x86 computers. The primary purpose of SystemRescue is to repair unbootable or otherwise damaged computer systems after a system crash. SystemRescue is not intended to be used as a permanent operating system. It runs from a Live CD, a USB flash drive or any type of hard drive. It was designed by a team led by François Dupoux, and is based on Arch Linux since version 6.0. Starting with version 6.0, it has systemd as its init system.
Ghost is a disk cloning and backup tool originally developed by Murray Haszard in 1995 for Binary Research. The technology was acquired in 1998 by Symantec.
vmlinux
is a statically linked executable file that contains the Linux kernel in one of the object file formats supported by Linux, which includes Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) and Common Object File Format (COFF). The vmlinux
file might be required for kernel debugging, symbol table generation or other operations, but must be made bootable before being used as an operating system kernel by adding a multiboot header, bootsector and setup routines.
Disk Utility is a system utility for performing disk and disk volume-related tasks on the macOS operating system by Apple Inc.
IMG, in computing, refers to binary files with the .img
filename extension that store raw disk images of floppy disks, hard drives, and optical discs or a bitmap image – .img
.
In Linux systems, initrd
is a scheme for loading a temporary root file system into memory, to be used as part of the Linux startup process. initrd
and initramfs
refer to two different methods of achieving this. Both are commonly used to make preparations before the real root file system can be mounted.
The Multiboot specification is an open standard describing how a boot loader can load an x86 operating system kernel. The specification allows any compliant boot-loader implementation to boot any compliant operating-system kernel. Thus, it allows different operating systems and boot loaders to work together and interoperate, without the need for operating system–specific boot loaders. As a result, it also allows easier coexistence of different operating systems on a single computer, which is also known as multi-booting.
The Windows Imaging Format (WIM) is a file-based disk image format. It was developed by Microsoft to help deploy Windows Vista and subsequent versions of the Windows operating system family, as well as Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs.
The EFIsystem partition or ESP is a partition on a data storage device that is used by computers having the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). When a computer is booted, UEFI firmware loads files stored on the ESP to start installing operating systems and various utilities.
The Recovery Console is a feature of the Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. It provides the means for administrators to perform a limited range of tasks using a command-line interface.
The multi-stage booting process of Linux is in many ways similar to the BSD and other Unix-style boot processes, from which it derives.
Windows Deployment Services (WDS) is a deprecated component of the Windows Server operating system that enables centralized, network-based deployment of operating systems to bare-metal computers. It is the successor to Remote Installation Services (RIS). WDS officially supports remote deployment of Windows Vista and later, as well as Windows Server 2008 and later. However, because WDS uses disk imaging, in particular the Windows Imaging Format (WIM), it could deploy virtually any operating system. This is in contrast with its predecessor, RIS, which was a method of automating the installation process.
VHD and its successor VHDX are file formats representing a virtual hard disk drive (HDD). They may contain what is found on a physical HDD, such as disk partitions and a file system, which in turn can contain files and folders. They are typically used as the hard disk of a virtual machine, are built into modern versions of Windows, and are the native file format for Microsoft's hypervisor, Hyper-V.
A System Deployment Image is a file format used primarily with Microsoft products to contain an arbitrary disk image, including boot sector information.
gPXE is an open-source Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) client firmware implementation and bootloader derived from Etherboot. It can be used to enable computers without built-in PXE support to boot from the network, or to extend an existing client PXE implementation with support for additional protocols. While standard PXE clients use TFTP to transfer data, gPXE client firmware adds the ability to retrieve data through other protocols like HTTP, iSCSI and ATA over Ethernet (AoE), and can work with Wi-Fi rather than requiring a wired connection.
AppleDisk Image is a disk image format commonly used by the macOS operating system. When opened, an Apple Disk Image is mounted as a volume within the Finder.