From owner-freebsd-config Wed Apr 30 01:56:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA16769 for config-outgoing; Wed, 30 Apr 1997 01:56:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA16764 for ; Wed, 30 Apr 1997 01:56:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.5/8.7.3) id SAA27950; Wed, 30 Apr 1997 18:26:13 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199704300856.SAA27950@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: Startup userconfig parsing In-Reply-To: <199704300837.SAA13095@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from Bruce Evans at "Apr 30, 97 06:37:30 pm" To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 18:26:13 +0930 (CST) Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, config@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-config@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Bruce Evans stands accused of saying: > > > >Hmm. Full-circle back to the three-stage boot I guess. > > Nope. That would be overengineered. Weeping not being my strong point, I feel close to real violence here 8) > >At this point, I'm inclined to seriously question whether you would > >consider anything other than a rock to be appropriately engineered. > > `cat' with no options was fine :-). Gack. How do you live with yourself these days? > No, it's desired to have no user-specified configuration data then. > Userconfig etc. are "temporary" kludges to get around h/w and BIOS > braindamage. Ah, I see. Well, let's apply the sophistry a little further, and suggest that in order to get around some more of this braindamage that some more extensive and organised kludging is required. > >expected to perform the interpretation. I still don't understand how > >ed is meant, one way or another, to have anything to do with arbitrary > >data intended for consumption by the kernel. > > boot: -s > ... > # mount / > # ed /boot.config # fix up booting problems > # ed /etc/fstab # fix up mounting problems > ... Yeeees. And how, in the above scenario, is 'ed' supposed to be "interpreting" the configuration information? To me it looks like it's 'ed'iting it, under the control of a user, who is responsible for interpreting it. > Page 0 is always preserved, and there's 2.5K or 3.5K to spare in it. This > is a nice limit for a config file size (stops you from overengineering it > :-) but is too small for splash screens. It would probably be simplest > for the bootstrap to put things below 640K and delay use of some pages > below 640K. This is what I want to do; I have been trying to work out how to arrange for the delayed use. It is not possible to mandate a fixed location unfortunately; both 'very low' and 'very high' are liable to occupation if eg. booting under DOS, so the passing of an address and size to the kernel is necessary. > Bruce -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[