From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG  Thu Jun 27 11:59:05 2013
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Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 05:59:04 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Brian Kim <briansan24@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: bsd boot sequence
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On Thu, 27 Jun 2013, Brian Kim wrote:

> To start, I was wondering if someone could briefly explain the operations
> and function calls that occur at boot time. I wish to thoroughly examine
> the freebsd source code but I'm afraid the sheer volume of code that exists
> leaves me with no real starting point for my research.

These should be a start.

man 8 boot
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot.html