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Date:      Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:19:21 -0600
From:      Ian Lepore <freebsd@damnhippie.dyndns.org>
To:        obrien@freebsd.org
Cc:        Arthur Mesh <arthurmesh@gmail.com>, freebsd-security@freebsd.org, Mark Murray <markm@freebsd.org>, Doug Barton <dougb@freebsd.org>, freebsd-rc@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r239598 - head/etc/rc.d
Message-ID:  <1346951961.59094.158.camel@revolution.hippie.lan>
In-Reply-To: <20120906164514.GA14757@dragon.NUXI.org>
References:  <201208222337.q7MNbORo017642@svn.freebsd.org> <5043E449.8050005@FreeBSD.org> <20120904220126.GA85339@dragon.NUXI.org> <50468326.8070009@FreeBSD.org> <20120906164514.GA14757@dragon.NUXI.org>

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On Thu, 2012-09-06 at 09:45 -0700, David O'Brien wrote:
> 
> > I'll have to give the kenv output a look. I would
> > also like to confirm that it's available on all platforms.
> 
> Geez, I'm not that stupid.  Do you see any guards within bin/Makefile
> that only build it for for some architectures?  I verified we have it
> on
> MIPS, ARM, and PowerPC and gives some output.  It does not give as
> much
> system-specific output as on x86 -- I wish it did, but the output can
> be
> rather unique on x86 it is worth including it.
> 
The kenv application may be available, but on any platform that
lacks /boot/loader it's likely to produce empty output.  Because the
kernel environment is typically empty, an embedded system may not even
have the kenv binary installed.  

I should note that I don't think the needs of embedded systems should
carry so much weight in this discussion that it leads to jumping through
major hoops.  I think the most important point would be "Let failures be
soft ones" -- things you may think of as basic tools always available on
a minimal installation may not be there on a stripped down embedded
system; no big deal, just don't hang the system or anything else dire in
that case.

Beyond that, I think a facility that lets a specialized embedded system
provide an alternate command sequence for seeding covers the rest of the
needs of embedded systems well enough.

-- Ian




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