Hi,
On Sun, 03.05.2009 at 11:00:02 -0700, J.C. Roberts  wrote:

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> I never said the boot.conf was not useful. I said the i386\amd64 hack

I don't see how 'set image ...' is a hack, nor how it would be specific

to i386 and amd64.
> The new installer (destined for 4.6) in snapshots *already* picks the

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> right kernel (GENERIC or GENERIC.MP) for the system, and installs it

> as /bsd.

This makes it harder to move a set of already-installed disks to a

different machine, a facility which I value for fast recovery.
> On all archs, when you wish to boot to a different on-disk kernel you

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> cab do it either by copying/moving kernel file to /bsd, and/or

> specifying the kernel file at boot time `boot /mybsd.custom.hack`

I dislike moving kernels around, but editing boot.conf is ok.
> When you treat i386\amd64 differently with the boot.conf kernel

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> designation feature, you are not only making things less portable, but

> worse, you're showing a bias towards what many consider to be a flawed

> system design.

Hmmm... Can you please point me to some reading about the upcoming

"non-flawed system design"?
> Now, let's say you are using the /etc/boot.conf hack to boot to bsd.mp,

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> and you go to update your stable system running an MP kernel. You read

> the FAQ and follow the directions for installing a new kernel and

> rebooting before building the whole system.

>

> When you do `make install` in your ../compile/GENERIC.MP/ directory,

> the newly built kernel gets installed as /bsd

>

> You supposedly reboot to your new kernel... and guess what? --Due to

> your boot.conf hack you're still running your *old* /bsd.mp kernel

> rather than your newly built /bsd kernel.

This problem imho *only* arises as a consequence due to installing the

new kernel in the wrong place. Would it have been installed in /bsd.mp,

nothing would have gone wrong. You could even opt to overwrite /bsd.mp

in that case, too, to make sure that you are backwards-compatible.
Kind regards,

--Toni++