> Other oddities, questions and comments...

[snip]

> * On the same point, I'm getting conflicting responses about the
>   seriousness of having one's kernel and binaries being out of sync.
>   I suppose the answer is "it depends", but still... does one need 
>   to download (urgh) and reinstall (urgh) matching binaries every
>   time a new kernel is tried, in order to avoid these kinds of
>   complications?  Is there some kind of compatability notice
>   accompanying a given snapshot which indicates so?  Just trying
>   to avoid unnecessary (and time-consuming) downloads.

The problem is usually when the userland binaries are newer than the
kernel.  Having a newer kernel is usually ok, unless the newer kernel
has radically changed something. Like between 1.2 and 1.3, we changed
how swap was delt with.  The new kernel needed a program to set things
up while the older ones had swap hard coded when they were made.
Booting a new kernel w/o that program would result in no swap.

Other than things like the swap thing above, it's usually fine to have a
newer kernel than programs.

> * The 19980725 kernel was still trying to mount my root&usr parition as
>   ext2fs instead of ffs and then dying with something like "ext2fs_baddir".
>   This was using the binaries from a couple weeks prior though.
>   Dumb question: is this something inherent to the kernel or to mount?
>   And I know, I know, I should try with the matching binaries from that
>   snapshot (whoops, or rather, both kernel and binaries from today's).

Does it successfully mount it as an ffs partition? If so, don't worry
about it. I think the deal is that it tries all the fs types in
alphabetical order, and ext2fs is before ffs.

Take care,

Bill