[gentoo-user] Boot Gentoo - by hand - line-by-line - command-by-command?

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
   I'm curious if there's a way to capture the exact set of command
that my machine executes as it boots up. I.e. - if I boot the machine,
letting the boot loader find the kernel but then stopping at a bash
prompt, before anything much has been done, I'd then like to know what
set of commands I could use from that bash prompt to make the machine
do whatever it does normally as it boots up.

   Is that possible, and is it documented anywhere? Or instead of
capturing commands maybe just a list of things that happen and the
bash commands I'd use to execute them myself.

   I think the init scripts, at least the ones I've found under
runlevels, are more generic than I would like to run. I'm looking for
something more like the portion of the install guide where we chroot
into the new build, except executing that from the command line of a
new machine that's booted. I.e.:

mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/gentoo
mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

except modified to start from nothing and bring the machine up from
scratch. Mount /proc, mount /dev, start udev, check root filesystem,
etc.

   This is totally for self-education and nothing else really. Just
curious about how it happens, what order things happen, etc. If anyone
can recommend a good _basic_ book that talks about this I'd appreciate
it.

Thanks,
Mark