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Installing from the live ISO

Open Install from the desktop or main menu, select a drive and confirm the installation. In a terminal, list drives and use the displayed disk ID:

install --list
install 2

Type INSTALL to confirm. Installation replaces the target disk’s partitions and erases its existing files. The target must be a writable AHCI disk with 512-byte sectors, cache-flush support and enough space for the live system. Open files prevent unmounting; the running system disk cannot be formatted.

What the installer does

  1. Unmounts the target and asks fatdriver to create an MBR partition table and format a FAT32 partition. The provisional MBR has no boot code or active flag.

  2. Writes Limine’s BIOS bootloader data into the area before the partition.

  3. Explicitly probes and mounts the new filesystem through fatdriver.

  4. Copies the loaded live filesystem using normal directory/file operations, patching /boot/limine/limine.conf with the MBR’s disk identity as root=fat:XXXXXXXX.

  5. Flushes and verifies the files and bootloader data, unmounts the filesystem, then commits the bootable MBR.

The kernel, applications and libraries remain ordinary FAT files. The installer, its private assets, its desktop/menu launchers and /boot/ramdisk are excluded. On failure, the installer attempts to unmount and discard its incomplete target so installation can be retried.

Booting the installed system

  1. BIOS starts Limine from the disk. Limine reads /boot/kernel and the bootstrap files listed in its configuration from the FAT partition into memory.

  2. The kernel exposes those module buffers as a small temporary filesystem using its ramdisk backend. Directory/file entries reference the loaded buffers; there is no complete ramdisk archive to unpack.

  3. Ghost starts PCI, ACPI and device management, followed by the storage manager, AHCI/FAT drivers and early display drivers. Their libraries and runtime files are also supplied as bootstrap modules. The drivers run as userspace processes.

  4. The storage manager discovers the disk’s volumes. The FAT driver matches the requested disk identity against the MBR signature, claims and mounts the boot volume through the manager. The kernel switches / to that FAT filesystem.

  5. The remaining services, ƒenster and applications load through the normal filesystem APIs from the disk.

The bootstrap files provide disk access before Ghost can mount FAT itself. Limine’s modules are preloaded files from the installed disk; listing a driver as a module does not make it kernel code or preload all installed applications.