From owner-freebsd-current Sun Feb 23 21:47:23 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95B1F37B401 for ; Sun, 23 Feb 2003 21:47:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net (stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.188]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA32043F75 for ; Sun, 23 Feb 2003 21:47:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0040.cvx22-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.198.40] helo=mindspring.com) by stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18nBSN-0006uI-00; Sun, 23 Feb 2003 21:47:15 -0800 Message-ID: <3E59B18F.3D0D4CC3@mindspring.com> Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 21:45:51 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Hiten Pandya Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: machdep.guessed_bootdev sysctl on i386 References: <20030224024210.GA50286@unixdaemons.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a4ac04d7d7f2f421a212b7f7a231413883666fa475841a1c7a350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hiten Pandya wrote: > Hello gang. Nothing big, but important... > > Can someone tell me if the machdep.guessed_bootdev sysctl is helpful at > all? I think it's a waste, and it's pretty limited and only available > on the i386. > > It currently guesses 'wd' instead of 'ad' for the dev. nodes, .e.g: > > hiten:~/> sysctl machdep.gussed_bootdev > machdep.guessed_bootdev: /dev/wd0s1a > > SCSI drives are shown right (da) but ATA drives mess up, i.e. it is > still thinking we have the 'wd' system. It's either that we nuke this > sysctl or apply the attached patch to sysctl, which has been reviewed > and tested by people on IRC with positive results. I've seen this used with FORTH code in order to automatically identify the correct device, after a failure to load modules from the wrong "guess". The "guess" comes from the BIOS. THere are some Dell systems where the BIOS doesn't set up the BX register correctly; I don't know if there are any systems besides Dell where this is an issue. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message