From owner-freebsd-stable Sat May 15 1:18:53 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from ceia.nordier.com (196-31-98-240.iafrica.com [196.31.98.240]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 67AAF14C9D for ; Sat, 15 May 1999 01:18:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rnordier@nordier.com) Received: (from rnordier@localhost) by ceia.nordier.com (8.8.7/8.6.12) id KAA22268; Sat, 15 May 1999 10:16:56 +0200 (SAST) From: Robert Nordier Message-Id: <199905150816.KAA22268@ceia.nordier.com> Subject: Re: equivalent to "-P" in boot.config In-Reply-To: <199905150137.SAA03336@vashon.polstra.com> from John Polstra at "May 14, 1999 06:37:40 pm" To: jdp@polstra.com (John Polstra) Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 10:16:51 +0200 (SAST) Cc: mike@smith.net.au, stable@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG John Polstra wrote: > In article <199905142221.PAA02318@dingo.cdrom.com>, > Mike Smith wrote: > > > What's the new /boot/loader.rc equivalent of -P in /boot.config? > > > > -P in /boot.config (This is the best place to do it) > > I'm curious about how it fits together. Does the bootblock code pass > the -P to /boot/loader, which then does the right thing with it? The -P is completely handled by boot2. The effect is to set the bootblock -D (dual) and -h (serial) options, if no keyboard is found. When control is passed to /boot/loader (and, because loader masquerades as an a.out kernel, the bootblocks are never completely sure whether they are loading loader or loading a kernel) the -h option causes a bit to be set in the "howto" flags passed to the kernel. So, the only outward result of -P is that (howto & RB_SERIAL) is non-zero, and this is what loader (or the kernel) reacts to. It's useful to have the -P or -h options in /boot.config in case control never reaches loader: both to see diagnostics and because, if /boot/loader is inaccessible, the bootblocks will attempt to boot the kernel directly. -- Robert Nordier To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message