Re: NetBSD bootloader randomly boots wrong kernel

[Sad Clouds <cryintothebluesky%googlemail.com@localhost>]

On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:46:43 +0000
"Jonathan A. Kollasch" <jakllsch%kollasch.net@localhost> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 04:43:14PM +0000, Sad Clouds wrote:
> > On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 17:11:52 +0100
> > Jean-Yves Migeon <jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost> wrote:
> > 
> > > On 27.12.2010 13:32, Sad Clouds wrote:
> > > > This is /netbsd kernel:
> > > > NetBSD 5.1_STABLE (GENERIC) #0: Mon Nov 29 19:52:01 GMT 2010
> > > > 
> > > > This is /netbsd.old kernel
> > > > NetBSD 5.1 (GENERIC) #2: Fri Nov 19 11:28:39 UTC 2010
> > > > 
> > > > Can anyone explain why my bootloader does this??
> > > 
> > > boot(8):
> > > 
> > >       The default filename is netbsd; if the boot loader fails to
> > >       successfully open that image, it then tries netbsd.gz (expected
> > >       to be a kernel image compressed by gzip), followed by
> > >       netbsd.old, netbsd.old.gz, onetbsd, and finally onetbsd.gz.
> > >       Alternate system images can be loaded by just specifying the
> > >       name of the image.
> > 
> > Yeah I'm aware of that, however if you have /netbsd and /netbsd.old, the 
> > bootloader should always load /netbsd. What I have been observing is 
> > bootloader loading /netbsd one time, then /netbsd.old another time, and so 
> > on. It seems like it randomly picks /netbsd or /netbsd.old and loads it. 
> > This should not happen.
> 
> Well, what's actually happening?  There's probably some error message we
> need to know about.
> 
>       Jonathan Kollasch

There is no error message, the only visible clue I get is different dmesg from 
kernel when bootloader loads /netbsd.old

To reiterate: it seems the bootloader sometimes loads /netbsd, and at other 
times /netbsd.old kernel, without me explicitly doing anything.

Is it possible there is a bug in bootloder, i.e. when it scans / filesystem for 
a kernel to load, it gets confused and loads /netbsd.old kernel when it should 
have loaded /netbsd??