Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 23:24:25 +0200 (MET DST) From: Eivind Eklund <perhaps@yes.no> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is there a way to prompt for boot device? Message-ID: <199709202124.XAA18194@bitbox.follo.net> In-Reply-To: j@uriah.heep.sax.de's message of Sat, 20 Sep 1997 13:05:51 %2B0200 References: <Pine.NEB.3.95.970919174919.20260V-100000@mail.cdsnet.net> <199709200219.WAA13122@smoke.marlboro.vt.us> <19970920130551.DB36336@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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> > at least in 2.2.2, boot -a works only if you have the kernel > > configured with "swap generic", which i think is not generally > > recommended, though i can't remember why. > > For hysterical raisons? > > What the heck would break if we started shipping GENERIC in 3.0 with > `swap generic'? What might break if we allowed -a for other kernels > as well? I assume the answer to both questions is just ``nothing''. It is a minor security breach - it would e.g. allow somebody with physical access to boot from a floppy[1] even if the machine isn't set up to do so from the BIOS. I'm not principally against this, but I want an option to turn it off. There are cases where I'll need it disabled (and quite a few cases where I've been extremely frustrated that it is off by default, due to discrepancies between FreeBSDs and the BIOS idea of what is wd1 when you have two IDE adapters and no slave disks) Eivind. [1] Or perhaps more likely NFS. Or something else. Something evil, at least ;-)
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