[[ Adding kern.loadfile sysctl ]]

but, but... what about diskless boot ???

kern.loadfile assumes that the kernel imagei s in a local filesystem,
or at least a mounted filesystem.


In my little corner of the world, that's a nonsensical assumption.

Machines often boot diskless.  Vagaries of the vendor bootprom
determine the protcol that's used to load either a kernel or a more
complete bootstrap.  bootstrap.  Even if the boot protocol provides a
kernel path to the bootloader, and the boot loader passes it to
the kernel, it's usually a path relative to the directory in which
the tftp daemon runs.

The set of systems, and circumstances, for which this works
reliably is  sufficiently non-inclusive that I don't think  it's worth it.

>If this is something we want to go ahead with, I'll be happy to
>fix sysctl and /etc/rc, and also do the kernel work for the alpha
>kernel. 

Whether that's ``fix'' or ``break'' seems open to some debate.