Subject: Re: /kern/kernel
To: None <>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: current-users
Date: 09/10/1998 10:24:34
>> This - or something like it - has been discussed before.  The
>> biggest problem with it is that what most programs want from /netbsd
>> is the symbol table, and that isn't always loaded into core.
> Programs that want the symbol table get it by running namelist not
> looking in core.

Well, yeah.  My point is that for /kern/kernel to be useful, it has to
provide a symbol table for nlist() to use, and for that, it needs to
have the symbols available to it in the first place.

>> (Indeed, unless you have ddb on, I think it usually isn't.)
> Symbols are loaded for ddb but only ddb gets to use them.  They are
> not currently exported.

And /kern/kernel doesn't currently exist either.  What I thought we
were discussing was the idea of changing that.  Unless the symbols are
available to kernfs, it can't export them via /kern/kernel.

On some ports, the executable file the kernel was booted from is
usually available to the running kernel - but not on all ports, and
even on the ports where it is, it's only *usually*, not *always*.  It
might be feasible for such ports to pass the booted pathname to the
kernel, and if the root is on the boot device, that pathname could be
used to locate the kernel.  This would probably work in enough cases to
be at least somewhat useful.

					der Mouse
