For more information about the topics in this chapter, see the System Startup Programming Topics book. It’s installed on your system as part of the Xcode Tools package and is located at /Developer/ADC Reference Library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/
.
You may also want to look at the following manpages:
nvram
bless
rc
launchd
launchd.plist
launchctl
SystemStarter