Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 16:45:41 -0800 From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM> To: Peter Dufault <dufault@hda.com> Cc: SimsS@infi.net, hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Adaptek 1542 on other ports Message-ID: <199503140045.QAA00450@corbin.Root.COM> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 13 Mar 95 10:22:20 EST." <199503131522.KAA03087@hda.com>
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>> Why is it that if a J. Random User goes thru the drill of configuring >> the plethora of non-standard locations for his misbegotten hardware >> setup, must he not only remember how he got the thing to boot, but he >> must also re-enter this stuff *every*flippin'*time*he*reboots*. > >Because the software hasn't been written? > >I doubt that Jordan and David are slapping themselves on the forehead >now and saying "Of course! It would work better if we SAVED >userconfig someplace!" This capability has always been in the forefront of thinking. In fact, the implementation of 'userconfig' was delayed because of a concern that doing this was going to be difficult and that the correct method (seperate file or modify the kernel binary) wasn't clear. I decided to do a first cut proof of concept without the write-back capability, however, and then turned the whole thing over to Jordan (who has much more experiance writing parsers and such). We've always planned to implement storing the configuration. ...then Ugen wanted something to do, so I suggested via Jordan that he write a utility to write back the data to the kernel binary (as this was the easiest and most straightforward way to do it [concerns about diskless booting notwithstanding]). The utility he came up with is called "dset", and has been committed. It didn't work right in the beginning, but I think it works fine now (I haven't tested it). It would be nice if the parameters were read from a seperate file (that is human readable and could be edited), but this complicates the bootstrap a bunch - especially for diskless booting - and I'm not sure if we can squeeze it into our already full bootblocks; I think it will require another boot stage. -DG
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