What Is zImage in Linux?
Contents zImage: a Compressed Version of the Linux Kernel Image That Is Self-Extracting. uImage: an Image File That Has a U-Boot Wrapper (Installed by the...
zImage: a compressed version of the Linux kernel image that is self-extracting. uImage: an image file that has a U-Boot wrapper (installed by the mkimage utility) that includes the OS type and loader information. A very common practice (e.g. the typical Linux kernel Makefile) is to use a zImage file.
What is zImage and bzImage?
zImage ( make zImage ) This is the old format for small kernels (compressed, below 512KB). At boot, this image gets loaded low in memory (the first 640KB of the RAM). bzImage ( make bzImage )
What are Atags?
The Atags is a list of information about certain aspects of the hardware. This list is created by the bootloader before our kernel is loaded. The bootloader places it at address 0x100, and also passes that address to the kernel through register r2.