On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 05:16:42PM -0500, Nathan Hawkins wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 01:57:15PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 12:44:07PM -0500, Nathan Hawkins wrote:
> > > On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 02:58:42PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote:
> > > > I really need to sit down and write a proposal / patches for NetBSD to
> > > > support the 'vendor' sysctl tree, that can be checked usefully. Since that
> > > > would be the canonical way of testing this (a 'debian' vendor could have a
> > > > sub-field indicating which sort of port it was).
> > >
> > > There is one possible problem with that. It occurred to that it is quite
> > > possible now to run regular freebsd in a jail or chroot on a debian
> > > freebsd box, and vice versa. I assume the same is true for the netbsd
> > > port. If we use sysctl or uname to make the distinction, that jail or
> > > chroot usage will be affected.
> >
> > This is, in fact, an issue with my chroot environment which I have to
> > spend some amount of effort to work around.
>
> I think it's probably a good idea to mark the kernel, like you're
> describing. I suspect NetBSD might be more than happy with that idea.
> I'm just concerned about actually using that in userspace for things
> like config.guess. I think that might be a mistake.
>
> We could always have config.guess test for the existance of
> /etc/debian_version, or other files from required packages. Something
> like that should reliably work in a jail or chroot.
IIRC, config.guess actually does look for /etc/debian_version, entirely
because trying to parse it out of uname -v is such a royal PITA, and the
'vendor' sysctl tree is, right now, fundamentally broken.
> > The nicer solution, IMO, would be user-mode-<foo>BSD, akin to
> > user-mode-linux. Especially when combined with bind mounts, this has the
> > potential to be very powerful, indeed.
>
> Hmm. Maybe someone out there would like to make a NetBSD port like UML.
> That'd be very cool, especially if it ran on Linux and FreeBSD as well.
As far as I understood it, part of the thing that makes UML as workable as
it is is that it's kept within the same kernel (ie, UML runs under a real
Linux kernel - or another UML, but eventually, at the top of the chain, is
a real Linux kernel)
> I'd still rather keep the ability to work in jails and chroots. The
> jails are probably more useful on freebsd, but chroots make it a lot
> easier for people to try this stuff out.
As noted above, I believe that (since this was more or less a requirement
to begin with) it's still possible to do. Things like the sysctl vendor
stuff are more of a nicety.
> > Unfortunately, I'm still not entirely clear on what all would need to be
> > done, to accomplish this properly.
>
> I don't know. Sounds like a lot of work.
Quiet possibly. You'll note I haven't done it yet. :)
--
Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
Debian GNU/NetBSD(i386) porter : :' :
`. `'
`-
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