I'm operating on an older kernel (1.2) which definitely has
at least one bug (kvm_nlist not recognizing that
/var/db/kvm_netbsd.db does not reflect the current kernel),
so I don't know that the behavior I'm seeing reflects the
more recent changes, but I'm a little concerned about
the way kvm_mkdb operates.

According to the documentation, kvm_mkdb <kernel> produces
a database file, /var/db/kvm_<kernel>.db.

If at boot time the correct kernel is passed to kvm_mkdb,
there will still be an incorrect database present in
/var/db/kvm_netbsd.db, which is apparently (?) the only
database kvm_nlist looks at.

There's also an inconsistency with the above, at least with
1.2. If I run kvm_mkdb on the current kernel (assuming it's
not the one in /netbsd) and move the new database into
/var/db/kvm_netbsd.db, and then run kvm_mkdb on the current
kernel again, no new database is generated. Perhaps this
is intentional, but it concerns me.

-- 
John R. Daily
jdaily@bbn.com