Peter Seebach wrote:
> >
> >Brian Buhrow writes:
> >>      How hard would it be to modify the boot blocks to read a configuration
> >> file from the file system to allow users to switch console types without
> >> having to recompile them?

> I'd like to point out that BSDI does this, and it's one of the best features
> out there.  It's great!  You can set flags, tweak device probing, and all
> sorts of cool stuff.  You can choose a root filesystem, too, which helps a
> lot.

While I am not a kernel hacker by any means, I am extremely impressed by
the FreeBSD Visual Config that you can access on boot.  Is this
something that might be in the works for NetBSD?  One side benefit of
this system is that while the monolithic kernel still will load drivers
that are not necessary, you can, in theory, compile a kernel that has
every device enabled and then set your parameters in the Visual Config
and have them saved from boot to boot without further intervention.  The
current FreeBSD Visual Config does not allow the setting of kernel
options such as X support, PPP and the like, but for hardware devices.  

It allows new users (new either to BSD or to Unix in general) to use an
out of the box kernel (perhaps kept in the kern distribution set) they
they can configure easily on first boot and leave alone without having
to worrk about the intricacies of a kernel configuration file at the
expense, of course, of trememdous memory consumption.

--
Christofer C. Bell                      Information Systems Lead
Union Computing Services                email: cbell@ukans.edu
University of Kansas                    phone: 785-864-4893