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Message-ID: <32839D5F.794BDF32@whistle.com>
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 12:51:43 -0800
From: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>
Organization: Whistle Communications
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To: Chris Csanady <ccsanady@friley216.res.iastate.edu>
CC: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Write-back boot blocks?  Why not...
References: <199611081241.GAA00324@friley216.res.iastate.edu>
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Chris Csanady wrote:
> 
> I recently came upon an IDE drive, so I have been poking around at
> things to get it to boot off my scsi.  I must say, Im sure there are
> plenty of new, users that get fairly disgusted trying to this to work. :(
> 
> Anyway, does the NAMEBLOCK_WRITEBACK feature of biosboot work?  (documented
> in /sys/i386/boot/biosboot/Makefile)  I noticed it was commented out.  I
> think it would be a really nice feature for 2.2 if it worked.  If not, perhaps
> the BOOT_HD_BIAS variable should be mentioned in the handbook or somewhere
> else obvious. :)
> 
> Just thought I'd bring it to everyones attention..


WE (whistle Communications) use the NAMEBLOCK_WRITEBACK
feature in our product. it allows us to make a turn-key
box that can boot to an alternate root
partition if the first one has screwed up....
(actually that's why we wrote it )
the version in -current is not quite correct.
you need to check out boot.c with tag JULIAN_HACK
to get the version that works corrently.

julian (E)