> smaug# file /usr/mdec/boot*
> /usr/mdec/boot:        data
> /usr/mdec/boot.net:    sparc executable

> Is there a way to transform "boot" into a "sparc executable"?

As I understand it:

Yes, and the result is boot.net.  The difference between boot and
boot.net is the presence of a header and their expected usage, not
anything inherent in them.  Or, to put it another way, it's not that
boot boots from disk and boot.net boots from net; each one boots from
whatever medium it was loaded from - it's just that boot is set up to
be installed on a disk and boot.net is set up to be installed where
tftp can grab it when netbooting.

See sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot/boot.c - it just calls
prom_getbootpath() to set prom_bootdevice - and
sys/arch/sparc/stand/common/promdev.c, which uses prom_bootdevice to
implement the devopen() used by sys/lib/libsa/open.c.

Of course, my understanding could be wrong.

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