>> At least one core team member (mycroft) has expressed support for the
>> idea that the kernel should always keep the symbol table in core...

> Ouch! My Sun 3/50 would not like that in the slightest.

In case I was unclear, if DDB is not set, the symbol table would be
kept in pageable memory, not wired memory.  Would you really miss the
swap space?

> Why not have a new sysctl variable, kern.filename or whatever, that
> contains the filename that the kernel was loaded from?

This would take care of the problem of booting from a kernel other
than "netbsd", but things would still fail if you move the kernel
around.  Keeping the symbol table in swap space is certainly more
robust, albeit more costly.