From owner-freebsd-current Mon Aug 28 5:54:32 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (zoom1-026.telepath.com [216.14.1.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D0D3B37B424 for ; Mon, 28 Aug 2000 05:54:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 84044 invoked by uid 100); 28 Aug 2000 12:54:21 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14762.24829.363032.115605@guru.mired.org> Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 07:54:21 -0500 (CDT) To: Maxim Sobolev Cc: Donn Miller , Brooks Davis , current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: hints static wiring In-Reply-To: <39AA5DC6.8D73081B@FreeBSD.org> References: <867l92lw8e.wl@tkc.att.ne.jp> <20000827184037.A22500@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <14762.8323.382969.782508@guru.mired.org> <39AA3882.914FC0A0@cvzoom.net> <14762.14890.276820.183791@guru.mired.org> <39AA5DC6.8D73081B@FreeBSD.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Maxim Sobolev writes: > Mike Meyer wrote: > > > Donn Miller writes: > > > Mike Meyer wrote: > > > > I do read cvs-all, and I missed it. Not did I find device.hints in the > > > > relevant Makefiles. Can you provide a pointer to details on how > > > > /boot/device.hints is used in the build process, or how having an > > > > empty one keeps you from shooting yourself in the foot? > > > Actually, device.hints isn't used in the build process. > > In that case, why does the kernel build process fail if it doesn't > > exist? > Probably because you have `hints "BLABLA.hints"' line in your kernel config > file. That doesn't really answer the question. Yup, I use GENERIC.hints. That exists. I can see why that not existing would cause problems, but not /boot/device.hints? *Especially* when I'm building a kernel for a different machine? > > > KERNEL.hints file is hard-coded into the kernel when your kernel is > > > built (assuming you use one). /boot/device.hints is used to override > > > the "hardcoded" values of hints, KERNEL.hints, at boot time. Sometimes, > > > people can make a mistake in KERNEL.hints, and it's necessary to > > > override those hints with /boot/device.hints. So, device.hints is > > > created after-the-fact, and not part of the kernel build. Of course, if > > > you don't have any hints to override, then just install an empty > > > device.hints file. > > Will the system fail to boot if there isn't an empty device.hints > > file? > No, it will boot, but some devices (like keyboard, console etc) would not work. That's clearly not true - I just removed an empty /boot/device.hints and rebooted, and all those things work fine. I can believe that such things won't work if they aren't specified in some hints file, but an empty /boot/device.hints doesn't do anything more to specify them than one that isn't there.