Subject: Re: Boot blocks croak on kernels with full debug table
To: Phil Knaack <flipk@ncremp.ag.iastate.edu>
From: Craig Metz <cmetz@sundance.itd.nrl.navy.mil>
List: port-i386
Date: 05/22/1996 07:17:53
In message <199605220439.XAA11846@ncremp.ag.iastate.edu>, you write:
>>-rwx------  1 root  ipv6  8405572 May 21 11:42 netbsd.gdb
>
>>	Once upon a time it was bigger (I stripped out some options). But it
>>still won't boot. The stripped version works fine.
>
>	It didn't occur to me earlier what it was you were trying to do.
>
>	"netbsd.gdb" isn't really intended to be booted, I don't think.
>Especially since most machines don't have enough memory to handle this.
>
>	The "netbsd" produced from "strip -d" IS to be booted, and the 
>.gdb file is to be used as the symbols file with the "gdb -k" command.
>
>	Of course I've not done it in a while...

	Even if it loads the debug symbols into memory and eats memory (in
my case, using ~10MB of 16MB), it should boot and run the kernel (or at least
give you an error message) instead of hard locking when it's supposed to be
jumping to the kernel entry point. The kernel should then immediately reclaim
the symbol table as usable memory. BSD/OS and 4.4-Lite on a SPARC can do
this just fine.

								-Craig