bootup — System bootup process
A number of different components are involved in the system boot. Immediately after power-up, the system BIOS will do minimal hardware initialization, and hand control over to a boot loader stored on a persistent storage device. This boot loader will then invoke an OS kernel from disk (or the network). In the Linux case this kernel (optionally) extracts and executes an initial RAM disk image (initrd) such as dracut(8) which looks for the root file system (possibly using systemd(1) for this). After the root file system is found and mounted the initrd hands over control to the host's system manager (such as systemd(1)) stored on the OS image which is then responsible for probing all remaining hardware, mounting all necessary file systems and spawning all configured services.
On shutdown the system manager stops all services, unmounts all file systems (detaching the storage technologies backing them), and then (optionally) jumps back into the initrd code which unmounts/detaches the root file system and the storage it resides on. As last step the system is powered down.
Additional information about the system boot process may be found in boot(7).
At boot, the system manager on the OS image is responsible for initializing the required file systems, services and drivers that are necessary for operation of the system. On systemd(1) systems this process is split up in various discrete steps which are exposed as target units. (See systemd.target(5) for detailed information about target units.) The boot-up process is highly parallelized so that the order in which specific target units are reached is not deterministic, but still adheres to a limited amount of ordering structure.
When systemd starts up the system it will
                activate all units that are dependencies of
                default.target (as well as
                recursively all dependencies of these
                dependencies). Usually
                default.target is simply an alias
                of graphical.target or
                multi-user.target depending on
                whether the system is configured for a graphical UI or
                only for a text console. To enforce minimal ordering
                between the units pulled in a number of well-known
                target units are available, as listed on
                systemd.special(7).
The following chart is a structural overview of these well-known units and their position in the boot-up logic. The arrows describe which units are pulled in and ordered before which other units. Units near the top are started before units nearer to the bottom of the chart.
local-fs-pre.target
         |
         v
(various mounts and   (various swap   (various cryptsetup
 fsck services...)     devices...)        devices...)       (various low-level   (various low-level
         |                  |                  |             services: udevd,     API VFS mounts:
         v                  v                  v             tmpfiles, random     mqueue, configfs,
  local-fs.target      swap.target     cryptsetup.target    seed, sysctl, ...)      debugfs, ...)
         |                  |                  |                    |                    |
         \__________________|_________________ | ___________________|____________________/
                                              \|/
                                               v
                                        sysinit.target
                                               |
          ____________________________________/|\________________________________________
         /                  |                  |                    |                    \
         |                  |                  |                    |                    |
         v                  v                  |                    v                    v
     (various           (various               |                (various          rescue.service
    timers...)          paths...)              |               sockets...)               |
         |                  |                  |                    |                    v
         v                  v                  |                    v              rescue.target
   timers.target      paths.target             |             sockets.target
         |                  |                  |                    |
         \__________________|_________________ | ___________________/
                                              \|/
                                               v
                                         basic.target
                                               |
          ____________________________________/|                                 emergency.service
         /                  |                  |                                         |
         |                  |                  |                                         v
         v                  v                  v                                 emergency.target
     display-        (various system    (various system
 manager.service         services           services)
         |             required for            |
         |            graphical UIs)           v
         |                  |           multi-user.target
         |                  |                  |
         \_________________ | _________________/
                           \|/
                            v
                  graphical.targetTarget units that are commonly used as boot
                targets are emphasized. These
                units are good choices as goal targets, for
                example by passing them to the
                systemd.unit= kernel command line
                option (see
                systemd(1))
                or by symlinking default.target
                to them.
The initial RAM disk implementation (initrd) can be set up using systemd as well. In this case boot up inside the initrd follows the following structure.
The default target in the initrd is
                initrd.target. The bootup process
                begins identical to the system manager bootup (see
                above) until it reaches
                basic.target. From there, systemd
                approaches the special target
                initrd.target. If the root device
                can be mounted at /sysroot, the
                sysroot.mount unit becomes active
                and initrd-root-fs.target is
                reached.  The service
                initrd-parse-etc.service scans
                /sysroot/etc/fstab for a possible
                /usr mount point and additional
                entries marked with the
                x-initrd.mount option. All
                entries found are mounted below
                /sysroot, and
                initrd-fs.target is reached. The
                service initrd-cleanup.service
                isolates to the
                initrd-switch-root.target, where
                cleanup services can run. As the very last step, the
                initrd-switch-root.service is
                activated, which will cause the system to switch its
                root to /sysroot.
                
                                               : (beginning identical to above)
                                               :
                                               v
                                         basic.target
                                               |                                 emergency.service
                        ______________________/|                                         |
                       /                       |                                         v
                       |                  sysroot.mount                          emergency.target
                       |                       |
                       |                       v
                       |             initrd-root-fs.target
                       |                       |
                       |                       v
                       v            initrd-parse-etc.service
                (custom initrd                 |
                 services...)                  v
                       |            (sysroot-usr.mount and
                       |             various mounts marked
                       |               with fstab option
                       |              x-initrd.mount...)
                       |                       |
                       |                       v
                       |                initrd-fs.target
                       \______________________ |
                                              \|
                                               v
                                          initrd.target
                                               |
                                               v
                                     initrd-cleanup.service
                                          isolates to
                                    initrd-switch-root.target
                                               |
                                               v
                        ______________________/|
                       /                       v
                       |        initrd-udevadm-cleanup-db.service
                       v                       |
                (custom initrd                 |
                 services...)                  |
                       \______________________ |
                                              \|
                                               v
                                   initrd-switch-root.target
                                               |
                                               v
                                   initrd-switch-root.service
                                               |
                                               v
                                     Transition to Host OSSystem shutdown with systemd also consists of various target units with some minimal ordering structure applied:
                                  (conflicts with  (conflicts with
                                    all system     all file system
                                     services)     mounts, swaps,
                                         |           cryptsetup
                                         |          devices, ...)
                                         |                |
                                         v                v
                                  shutdown.target    umount.target
                                         |                |
                                         \_______   ______/
                                                 \ /
                                                  v
                                         (various low-level
                                              services)
                                                  |
                                                  v
                                            final.target
                                                  |
            _____________________________________/ \_________________________________
           /                         |                        |                      \
           |                         |                        |                      |
           v                         v                        v                      v
systemd-reboot.service   systemd-poweroff.service   systemd-halt.service   systemd-kexec.service
           |                         |                        |                      |
           v                         v                        v                      v
    reboot.target             poweroff.target            halt.target           kexec.targetCommonly used system shutdown targets are emphasized.