re: Booting

[matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au>]

   >   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?)

(i'm not suggesting i'm advocating that netbsd proper will switch
to a /boot dir -- that's someone else's problem.  i was mostly
pointing out that the default /boot as a file isn't a problem.)


/usr/mdec still exists as always.  (though it apparently should
be called /usr/mi386 -- /usr/mdec was for DEC [vax] machines,
but the name stuck everywhere.)