Excerpts from netbsd: 25-Apr-97 Re: Serial consoles ronald@demon.net (981)

[pass boot options to kernel]

> It would also be nice to be able to make a
> persistent-across-reboot change in the default without having
> to swap kernels.  Something like a boot options file perhaps?

I thought about it a while ago...
It would be easy if one finds some persistent RAM locations
which are present in all PCs.
Option files are hairy because the kernel has to know
for sure which device it was booted from. BIOS and kernel
can have different views of the hardware, depending on
BIOS device swap options, BIOS extensions and kernel
driver wiring. There can only be "educated guesses"
which are OK for booting in most cases (if not, one
specifies a "root on xx" in the kernel config), but not
save enough for boot options.
In some setups, I boot a kernel from floppy which
runs diskless later and does not necessarily have a
floppy driver at all...

best regards
Matthias