Re: Shared-root diskless netboot, critical local/remote mounts, and rc.conf

[Chris Hanson <cmhanson%eschatologist.net@localhost>]

On Oct 6, 2025, at 7:03 PM, Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost> wrote:

> It sounds as though you might have more than that to do.  But note that
> rc.conf is not just a collection of variables; it is a shell script.
> It can run programs and probe various things to determine what to set
> variables to.
> 
> At worst you might have to add code to /etc/rc, though my tendency
> would be to look fairly hard at finding ways to avoid that.

Indeed, that’s one of the other big downsides of rc.conf versus a fully declarative system like launchd.

I do expect though to have to add code to both /etc/rc and /etc/rc.subr, I’m really not too worried about doing that.

My thinking is that if I add a CRITICALREMOTEMOUNTED to make things depend on. it can be what calls an rc.subr function to trigger a “reload” (rerun) of /etc/rc.conf to get additional settings from a newly-available /etc.

It’s certainly simpler to change bootparams to add an additional mount or to change init to invoke an /etc/rc.boot first, but I want to do something that I might have a chance of contributing. :)

  -- Chris