The following reply was made to PR port-i386/40752; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Matthias Drochner <M.Drochner%fz-juelich.de@localhost>
To: "Jared D. McNeill" <jmcneill%invisible.ca@localhost>
Cc: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost, port-i386-maintainer%NetBSD.org@localhost,
gnats-admin%NetBSD.org@localhost, netbsd-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Subject: Re: port-i386/40752: x86 bootloader panic()/exit() loop
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:51:27 +0100
jmcneill%invisible.ca@localhost said:
> ``Ralf Brown's Interrupt List'' says about int 0x18:
> [...]
There has been some research ~10 years ago when the
boot code was reworked.
PCs now usually try the next of the list of
boot devices if a boot loader terminates with
int 0x18, do the "press any key to reboot" prompt
if none is left. So this would fit into the
usual semantics.
(This is only for biosboot; it only rarely works
for network boot ROMs, and of course not from DOS.
That's why the "exit" code needs to be booter
specific rather than a generic library function.)