Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:44:16 +0100 From: Gavin Atkinson <gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk> To: Eric Anderson <anderson@freebsd.org> Cc: Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, "Wojciech A. Koszek" <wkoszek@freebsd.org>, Alex Kozlov <spam@rm-rf.kiev.ua>, Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> Subject: Re: Improved INCLUDE_CONFIG_FILE Message-ID: <1174902256.44767.3.camel@buffy.york.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <4607523E.50201@freebsd.org> References: <20070324113739.GA41119@ravenloft.kiev.ua> <20070324135333.GA86105@FreeBSD.czest.pl> <20070324153108.P4956@fledge.watson.org> <20070324220041.GI847@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <20070324233307.GA93841@FreeBSD.czest.pl> <20070325153013.E77473@ury.york.ac.uk> <4607523E.50201@freebsd.org>
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On Sun, 2007-03-25 at 23:55 -0500, Eric Anderson wrote: > On 03/25/07 09:34, Gavin Atkinson wrote: > > On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Wojciech A. Koszek wrote: > >> On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 08:00:41AM +1000, Peter Jeremy wrote: > >>> On 2007-Mar-24 15:32:00 +0100, Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org> wrote: > >>>> On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Wojciech A. Koszek wrote: > >>>>> I'd like to have this enabled by default, and I know there should be no > >>>>> strong objections. > >>>> I agree -- the memory used by it is very small compared to the amount of > >>>> memory in modern systems, and the potential administrative benefit is very > >>>> large. As long as it remains an option, the embedded folk can turn it off > >>>> easily. > >>> Ideally, we would include it in a .comment section that wasn't loaded. > >>> Unfortunately my ELF-foo isn't up to this (I've tried something similar > >>> many years ago and couldn't get the linker to DWIW). > >> In my current implementation, kernel configuration content is converted > >> to the string and is actually put into separate ELF section. However, > >> it's not .comment but a loadable section, since otherwise you wouldn't > >> be able to obtain the configuration of a running system. > > > > strings `sysctl -n kern.bootfile` | grep ^___ | sed -e 's/^___//' > > > > should still work if it was in a .comment section > > Unless you no longer have the running kernel, or it has changed since > the boot up of the system. A sysctl knob to dump it is *very* useful. Would it? The main benefit that I see is to be able to say "That kernel config doesn't boot, what did I have in my last kernel?". I can't think of a single situation where you would be likely to have a kernel still running, but no longer have a copy of it in /boot/kernel or /boot/kernel.old. Note that I'm not against the suggestion, I just don't think I see the point. Gavin
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