On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Ross Patterson wrote:

> On Monday 14 April 2003 10:43 am, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Julio Merino wrote:
> > > as kernel files can contain embedded configuration files (with options
> > > INCLUDE_CONFIG_FILE or INCLUDE_JUST_CONFIG), I think it could be good
> > > if config(8) could automatically extract them and configure a new
> > > kernel based on that information.
> >
> > Clearly, we need something like that. Otherwise, what's the point of
> > embedding the file? I'd find it more useful if it could recover the
> > original file, to update it for newer sources or to tweak it, than to
> > configure with the live kernel directly, though.
>
> There's a common patch against the Linux kernel, included in several of the
> mainstream distributions, that stores the configuration in the kernel just as
> INCLUDE_CONFIG_FILE does (although compressed).  The patch also makes the
> configuration file available in as /proc/config.gz when the kernel is
> running.  There's a certain elegance to that (e.g., no guessing about whether
> somebody has a string starting "_CFG_" that isn't config data, etc.),
> although it doesn't help in the not-running case.
>
> I know Linux examples often aren't well-regarded, but in this case it looks
> like they've got a good one to offer.  Perhaps NetBSD should have a
> /kern/config that can just be read to get the current configuration?

"/kern" isn't well-regarded either, so it would probably be OK. ;-)

Frederick