[ On Friday, January 28, 2000 at 21:42:19 (-0800), Todd Whitesel wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: serial console HOWTO?
>
> You've shown that your boot blocks are good for people with setups like
> yours, but you haven't shown that they're good for everyone using i386.

You might have a bit of a point.  However the above argument doen't wash
very well when you bring into light the fact that FreeBSD (which I think
everyone will agree is much more widely used than NetBSD on i386)
defaults to very much the same scheme I use (or at least that's the
documented recommendation as I read it).  Now of course FreeBSD has a
wealth of run-time controllable options for boot and indeed my
complaints about NetBSD's inferior i386 boot configuration support would
be all silenced if FreeBSD's boot blocks were adapted for use in NetBSD.

> And I don't think you'll be able to, because the wide range of environments
> happens to present mutually conflicting requirements to the boot blocks.

I'm not so sure about that....  I would doubt there are any more than at
most two sets of contradictory environments for NetBSD users:  desktop
and server.  In my Sun experience I've found even the distinctions
between server and desktop to be completely bogus -- the same system
configuration tools can work equally well for both environments.

Mind you my overall experience with Unix is definitely stronger on the
server side (desk-top Unix systems are a recent development in my eye).

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>