Re: Booting

[Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at>]

In article <[🔎] 23184.1015725595@eterna.com.au> you write:
>
>   The NetBSD loader is, unsurprisingly, not subject to this restriction. I'd
>   be tempted to go with packaging this and using it as our primary boot
>   mechanism unless anyone objects. The one problem I can think of is that it
>   stores the bootcode in /boot, which is a directory under Linux systems. Do
>   we want to leave /boot as a directory and move the BSD bootcode in there
>   (presumably patching things slightly in the process) or leave it as is?
>
>the location of "/boot" as a file is pretty irrelevant for i386.  when
>"installboot" is run, it hard codes the inodes for it into the 2nd
>stage loader (biosboot.sym) and reloads it.  so when you run installboot
>you can simply give it a pathname other than "/boot" and it will use it
>when it comes to booting.
>
>to be honest, i've slowly come to appreciate /boot as a directory.

FreeBSD has a directory /boot too (in -STABLE it holds the stage 3 loader
and its configuration, and in -CURRENT i believe the kernel(s) and
modules have moved in there too). So it would seem sensible to make
NetBSD follow the others. (Does NetBSD/i386 not use /usr/mdec any more?)

Tony.