Re: NetBSD bootloader randomly boots wrong kernel

[Jean-Yves Migeon <jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost>]

On 27.12.2010 19:22, Sad Clouds wrote:
> 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??

Never head of that one though, and never occured to me.

Given the loop in arch/i386/stand/boot/boot2.c, booting from netbsd.old
(or any alternative) will get you at least two messages:
- one telling you that it is booting netbsd.old
- one error message (bootit() will print an error if it fails locating
the original kernel)

So, while there are probably bugs in the bootloader, even if the ffs
modules fails fetching the file, it should print an error.

IMHO, delete the netbsd.old file. It bootloader randomly chooses to boot
this kernel, given that it is the last resort option, it will fail
badly. We will probably have more interesting output in this case.

-- 
Jean-Yves Migeon
jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost