Looking at PR 8473, I wonder if it would hurt to add the following to
src/distrib/i386/floppies/ramdisk/dot.profile:

--- dot.profile 1999/06/26 06:12:57     1.6
+++ dot.profile 1999/09/23 02:16:30
@@ -66,6 +66,8 @@
        # pull in the functions that people will use from the shell prompt.
        # . /.commonutils
        # . /.instutils
+       dmesg() cat /kern/msgbuf
+       grep() sed -n "/$1/p"
 
        # run the installation or upgrade script.
        sysinst

If we'd be fascist about space, we could tweak the shell comments. 
If we're getting more such aliases, we could even resurrect
dot.commonutils. 

I've given this a try-test, i.e. run sh and '. ./dot.profile', then tried
the dmesg & grep functions. Worked fine - for the case of grep even better
than the /usr/bin/grep on 1.4.1 (who insistet on /kern/msgbuf being a
binary files (because of the leading 0s), and didn't tell me anything).


 - Hubert

-- 
NetBSD - Better for your uptime than Viagra