Re: Additional (replacement?) vendor-identification
On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 04:18:51PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 04:48:58PM +0100, Pavel Cahyna wrote:
>
> > I don't understand this much. On my Debian/Linux system, uname doesn't
> > return anything about Debian, only Linux-specific stuff. I'm not aware
> > of any sysctl (on Linux) related to debian or other distribution. So why
> > should Debian/NetBSD be different from Debian/Linux in this?
>
> Most software assumes that a given kernel means that there's a given
> userland. This is generally only a problem during buildtime, but it
> means that we have to be able to distinguish between a GNU userland and
> a BSD one.
>
> What would probably be nice would be a single sysctl in the upstream
> NetBSD kernel that allowed an arbitrary string to be inserted somewhere
> in the bootscripts,
I get the impression that maybe we should push for uname to give system
information including the userland on all platforms. As that would make
sense in terms of why can't I have a Linux kernel with a BSD userland.
What about The HURD as well, surely they have had similar problems.
> which would allow unmodified upstream kernels to be
> used (which would possibly appeal to people using various branches and
> so on). sysctl -w netbsd.vendor=Debian, for example.
It would be rather cool if I could reboot my system and simply change
kernels for whatever reason. Although that seems a little far fetched.
Practically being able to update your kernel straight from NetBSD source
would make life easier in the future.
Dan
Reply to: