Subject: Re: vmstat, iostat etc no longer work?
To: Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
List: current-users
Date: 11/12/1996 18:36:44
[[ Adding kern.loadfile sysctl ]]
but, but... what about diskless boot ???
kern.loadfile assumes that the kernel imagei s in a local filesystem,
or at least a mounted filesystem.
In my little corner of the world, that's a nonsensical assumption.
Machines often boot diskless. Vagaries of the vendor bootprom
determine the protcol that's used to load either a kernel or a more
complete bootstrap. bootstrap. Even if the boot protocol provides a
kernel path to the bootloader, and the boot loader passes it to
the kernel, it's usually a path relative to the directory in which
the tftp daemon runs.
The set of systems, and circumstances, for which this works
reliably is sufficiently non-inclusive that I don't think it's worth it.
>If this is something we want to go ahead with, I'll be happy to
>fix sysctl and /etc/rc, and also do the kernel work for the alpha
>kernel.
Whether that's ``fix'' or ``break'' seems open to some debate.