On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Baby Peanut wrote:

> What I want to know is why are programs that are known to damage
> machines put in
>
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/vax/kernels/
>
> without even a README to warn people.

I think this is a very valid complaint.  Quite a few people have been
bitten by this problem already.  There should be warnings on the VAX
port pages, there should be addendums to all the relevant old release
notes and READMEs for the releases, and the directory:

  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/vax/kernels/

Should, at the very least, have a README warning of the problem with the
relevant kernels and affected machines.

Even though the problem has been fixed with 1.6 and later kernels, there
are still plenty of older NetBSD/vax install CD-ROMs in circulation, and
the older versions are accessible from the net.  The risk of this sort
of problem still very much exists.

I do know that someone was working on collecting the various known good
VS4000/90 (and VS4000/90A and VS4000/96?) ROM images.  But it'll take a
little digging to figure out who it was and what the status of the
collection is.  Given good images, it should be possible to correct the
data in the damaged nvram areas.

Over the next few days, I'll see what I can find out.  I'll also put
together some documentation changes and see if I can get someone with a
NetBSD project account to have them placed on the official site.

-brian.