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To: Paul Traina <pst@shockwave.com>
cc: current@freebsd.org, Bill Fenner <fenner@parc.xerox.com>
Subject: Re: userconfig doesn't work on tvi925 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 11 Sep 95 22:01:47 PDT."
             <199509120501.WAA12444@precipice.shockwave.com> 
From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
Reply-To: davidg@Root.COM
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 22:14:47 -0700
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>Jordan,
>
>I was speaking with a friend about the new userconfig stuff today, and
>he had what I think is a simply grand idea.
>
>I am really concerned that this crap is in the kernel.  I don't think
>it belongs there,  but I was convinced by the old "dumb terminal"
>userconfig that it was good.
>
>Here is my suggestion.
>
>Pull out the new userconfig ENTIRELY.  Get rid of it.  Instead, add a
>sysctl interface and a staticly linked program in /sbin to operate that
>interface.  This keeps the kernel clean, and gives you access to fancy
>stuff in user mode.  If you want to have the old userconfig for emergencies,
>I have absolutely no objection to that (it would be nice if it was #ifdef'ed).
>
>Yes, I'm sorry, I realize it's a pain in the ass to throw away work, but
>we're really better off with a separation between kernel and user mode stuff.
>
>(hell, then you can use curses if you want).

   That's all nice and fine, and we *should* write a user program to do
configuration, but this has nothing to do with why 'userconfig' was created.
It was created so that people could boot/install FreeBSD without having to
rip their machine apart and reconfigure all of their hardware to conform to
our GENERIC kernel. If you can't boot the system, then you can't run the fancy
user program from /sbin to do the dirty deed.

-DG