Re: Proposal to fix booted_kernel on shark.

> > On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 09:10:55AM -0800, [email protected] wrote:
> > 
> >  > mrg pointed out that this could confuse somebody with an a.out userland...
> >  > and I agree. Those programs will now get errors trying to grovel the wrong
> >  > kernel.
> > 
> > If they're using an a.out userland, why would they have /netbsd.aout ?
> 
> They could be retrofitting an old system with a new kernel, in order to solve
> a problem without reinstalling their whole machine.
> 
> Since apparently some libkvm's can grok both OMF's, this is probably better
> fixed in libkvm.  Everyone who cares about the kernel OMF should be using it?

That sounds like making life hard for the many in order to make life 
easier for the few.

That's backwards in my opinion.  Anyone doing a retrofit as you suggest 
isn't going to be worried anywhere near as much about such an anomaly as a 
normal day-to-day user, with a correctly installed system, who can't get 
proper system dumps or whatever.

Anyway, why would anyone installing a new kernel on an a.out system want 
to install their kernel under any name other than "netbsd"? -- the patch 
only removes a ".aout" extension if it is present.

R.