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Date:      Wed, 11 Nov 1998 00:04:10 -0800 (PST)
From:      Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>
Cc:        Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>, Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Is it soup yet? :-) 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.95.981110235343.15702D-100000@current1.whistle.com>
In-Reply-To: <8872.910763340@zippy.cdrom.com>

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well, don't forget that those of us that require the old style bootblocks
and have *LOTS* of machines in the field that will be 
upgrading to 3.0 based systems would like to see you NOT making the
following changes:
1/ kernels that REQUIRE the new bootblocks, even if statically linked.
2/ kernels that REQUIRE the new bootblocks, even if statically linked.

just thought I'd restate this to remind everyone in the boot-block crew..

:-)

the ability to run on old bootblocks is how shall I say...
"required".
loading new bootblocks is not an option on these systems, however they
must still have an upgrade path.

However anything goes with dynamically linked kernels...
(we don't use them anyhow)


On Tue, 10 Nov 1998, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> > Oh, one other thing.. libdisk is built by doing a file2c of /usr/mdec/
> > boot1/boot2 and compiling it in.  It is using the *old* boot code, because 
> > libdisk is built before src/sys/boot in a 'make world'.  
> 
> I suppose we could move src/sys/boot earlier in the worldbuild.
> Any objections?

no, but keep our custommers in mind :-)

> 
> > BTW; I really do not like moving the bootblock source files (boot0/1/2) to
> > /boot;  I think of /boot as an equivalent to the bootblocks..  /usr/mdec
> 
> There are several good reasons for shooting /usr/mdec through the
> head, once more through the heart for good measure and then jumping up
> and down on its twitching corpse for awhile.  I shall list them:
> 
> 1. It is under /usr.  disklabel is in /sbin.  Enough said.
> 
> 2. /usr/mdec, evil though it was, gave us a single place to look for
>    boot related material.  It wasn't a lot of material (<2MB) but it
>    was diverse enough to include UFS, DOS and network booting code
>    and it would be a shame to have to remember to look in two places for
>    that stuff.  I think there should be only one boot frob
>    directory and that it should be /boot
> 
> 3. /usr/mdec is a silly-assed name.  Who thought of it?  What does it even
>    stand for?  hier(7) just says "boot programs; see disklabel(8)" and
>    doesn't particularly enlighten.  And if it's just for disklabel,
>    as hier(7) strongly implies, then why isn't it on the root filesystem
>    along with disklabel?  Like I said, it's <2MB in size so it can't be
>    for space reasons.

I don't care where this stuff goes as long as it still works :-)

> 
> In short, I think /usr/mdec was a temporary cerebral aneurism on
> someone's part and is a cryptically named, improperly located
> anachronism that needs death.  I want my boot blocks and anything else
> I might want to copy on/off a floppy for booting purposes on the root
> filesystem where they belong, along with my kernels! :-)
> 
> - Jordan
> 
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