beyond the limits imposed by some architectures, where the space available to store the compressed kernel code is limited. The bzImage (big zImage) format was developed to overcome this limitation by splitting the kernel over non-contiguous memory regions. The bzImage was compressed using gzip until Linux 2.6.30, which introduced more algorithms. Although the bz prefix may suggest that bzip2 compression is used, this is not the case. (The bzip2 package is often distributed with tools prefixed with bz, such as bzless, bzcat, etc.) The bzImage file is in a specific format. It contains concatenated bootsect.o + setup.o + misc.o + piggy.o. piggy.o contains the gzipped vmlinux file in its data section. The script extract-vmlinux found under scripts/ in the kernel sources decompresses a kernel image. Some distributions (e.g. Red Hat and clones) may come with a kernel-debuginfo RPM that contains the vmlinux file for the matching kernel RPM, and it typically gets installed under /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/`uname -r`/vmlinux or /usr/lib/debug/lib64/modules/`uname -r`/vmlinux. See also Linux kernel Module (Linux) initrd System.map Object file Notes and references Further reading External links Boot process Linux kernel