> The boot.default stuff, well, it's a fair bit of work, but MAN is it useful.
> For those who have never seen it:
> 	* The boot loader loads a file called /etc/boot.default
> 	* It can also take commands entered by hand
> 	* Commands may pass parameters to the rest of the boot loader or
> 	  the kernel
> That's it, but consider the following /etc/boot.default lines:
> 	# suppress ultra2 probe on target 2 on aic0, because we happen
> 	# to know that the disk's firmware is dodgy
> 	-parm aic0 ultra2=all-t2
> 	# only probe up to 1GB of memory on dodgy old pentium board
> 	-extendend 1G
> 	# load ramdisk
> 	-ramdisksize 2048k
> 	-ramdiskfile filesys.gz
> 	# load kernel from one disk, put root on another
> 	-kernel sd(0,0):/netbsd.old
> 	-rootdev wd(0,0)
> 	# force disable of ehci driver on this machine
> 	-dev ehci* port=-1
> 
> You get the idea.  All *sorts* of cool stuff, and a standard interface
> for drivers to announce their parameters.

I have thought about this, and the mechanism isn't too hard, nor too
far away from where we are now (at least on some ports).

The boot program (eg the i386 one) could easily be changed to
read commands from a file, before and/or after commands from the user.
The other functionality is just a matter of adding code to either do,
or request the kernel do, what you want.

One problem is that the 17 billion ports that use a similar boot scheme
all have their own private copy of the file.

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk