On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 03:38:17PM -0400, Charles M. Hannum wrote:
> 
> Uh, I feel I have to comment here...
> 
> I *NEVER* proposed `[losing] the RB_ASKNAME functionality'.  If you
> read my original message on this subject, the following was fairly
> clear:
> 
> Boot blocks already have to know about partitions, in order to find
> kernels.  The proposal was to move `the RB_ASKNAME functionality' from
> the kernel to the boot block.  Given this and wedges, the kernel would
> not need to know about partitions at all, thus completely eliminating
> a large pile of divergent code.
> 
> The ability to specify a different root partition would still be
> present; it would just be in a different place.

This affects the 'netbsd root on on xxx' kernel config functionality
as well (once we have this, RB_ASKNAME is trivial :)
Then this assume that the root fs has to be known from the bios (in i386
world, maybe this can be applied to other ports as well). 
You can't have your system on this biosless SCSI board and just boot from
floppy when you need to use it.

--
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           Manuel.Bouyer@lip6.fr
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