From owner-freebsd-arch Mon Jul 17 22:10: 5 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from palrel1.hp.com (palrel1.hp.com [156.153.255.242]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9F1FB37BB47 for ; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 22:09:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from marcel@cup.hp.com) Received: from adlmail.cup.hp.com (adlmail.cup.hp.com [15.0.100.30]) by palrel1.hp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C15ED8E for ; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 22:09:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cup.hp.com (p1000180.nsr.hp.com [15.109.0.180]) by adlmail.cup.hp.com (8.9.3 (PHNE_18979)/8.9.3 SMKit7.02) with ESMTP id WAA29044 for ; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 22:09:43 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <3973E698.B8D53F1F@cup.hp.com> Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 22:09:44 -0700 From: Marcel Moolenaar Organization: Hewlett-Packard X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: arch@FreeBSD.org Subject: Multiple kernels / module search path Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi, I'm about to work on the buildkernel and installkernel targets in makefile.inc1. Currently we can build multiple kernels (with their modules) and install just one kernel (with its modules). PR 17698 has a patch to allow multiple kernels to be installed. Question 1: Do we want the ability to install multiple kernels? Assume for a moment that we don't want to install multiple kernels; we still need to improve the support for having multiple kernels in / if we continue to rename the existing kernel (and modules directory) when we install a new one. The problem is that the old kernel (ie kernel.old) still has /:/boot:/modules as the module search path while the modules directory that corresponds to this kernel is modules.old. Therefore booting any kernel other than 'kernel' is potentially dangerous. If we do want the support to install multiple kernels with the installkernel target, we face the same problem. Say that we install the first kernel as "kernel" with modules directory "/modules". The module search path is correct in this case. Other kernels are installed as, say, kernel.NAME. These kernels should have their modules directory be set to "/modules.NAME". But we also have to make sure that their module search path is adjusted properly. Question 2: Is the above naming scheme acceptable? Question 3: Should we change the order in which modules are searched to /modules{.NAME}:/boot:/, where {.NAME} denotes the optional name suffix. Question 4: Do we want /modules in the search for kernels with a non-zero name so that the search path will be /modules.NAME:/modules:/boot:/ It's a bit cryptic at places, but I hope the general idea has been communicated sufficiently. Your feedback is appreciated, BTW: My personal preference is "yes, yes, yes, no" :-) -- Marcel Moolenaar mail: marcel@cup.hp.com / marcel@FreeBSD.org tel: (408) 447-4222 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message