On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Jim Wise wrote:

> [ boot from /netbsd.  only boot from /netbsd.<arch> if no /netbsd ]

I agree with you on this point.  I and many other users have learned to
rely on being able to rename a kernel that I don't want in operation in
order to keep it from being booted.  Searching for alternate names before
the canonical one not only seems backwards but could possibly bite
someone who isn't expecting it.

> If you wanted to be really spiffy, you could fall back to
> /netbsd.${ARCH} if the kernel named /netbsd was for the wrong
> architecture...  (Is this detectable early enough?)

Under the a.out header format, architectures are distinguished by CPU
family.  Both of the sun3 and sun3x kernels, and even the hp300 and mac68k
kernels, share the same a.out family (m68k).  Thus, kernels are not
distinguishable at the a.out header level.  The only way we could support
differentiation is to have the boot program read the symbol table; doing
so might make it too large.

-J