Subject: Re: kern/21060: ufs looks like it's mighty hosed
To: Geoff Wing <mason@primenet.com.au>
From: Luke Mewburn <lukem@netbsd.org>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 04/08/2003 12:53:37
On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 12:42:42PM +1000, Geoff Wing wrote:
  | Luke Mewburn <lukem@netbsd.org> typed:
  | :On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 01:39:00AM +0000, Geoff Wing wrote:
  | :  | I had this happen to me too.  Killed half my /lib files (including libc),
  | :  | /sbin/init, etc. and AFAIK there was no way for me to specify a different
  | :  | init (like /rescue/init) through the bootstrap (on i386).
  | :
  | :Did you try "boot -a" ?
  | 
  | Nope.  I had another i386 system there and looked in init(8) & boot(8)
  | but didn't see anything indicating that "init" could be specified.  More
  | specifically, searching for "init" in boot(8) found nothing.

Ok, so the documentation (boot(8)) is out of date.  Mea culpa.

If you look at doc/CHANGES:
        boot(8): allow path to init(8) to be entered when booting with
                RB_ASKNAME ("boot -a").  [lukem 20020823]

(It appears that not all ports use "-a" to set RB_ASKNAME; if you use
the appropriate option to do that then the MI code in the kernel
should ask you for the path to init after the root device & dump device). 

Luke.