On Tue, 16 Mar 1999 09:49:05 -0700 (MST) 
 "Michael L. Hitch" <mhitch@lightning.oscs.montana.edu> wrote:

 >   The DB_*_SYMBOLS is needed so that ddb knows what kind of symbol table
 > is present.  [I'm assuming that the ELF symbol table format is different -
 > I haven't checked this yet.]  I think that the comment may have come from
 > when the DB_ELF_SYMBOLS was originally added to the file, but since the
 > pmax was currently using aout kernels, the DB_AOUT_SYMBOLS was defined,
 > but the comment didn't get updated.

Note you can define both.  NetBSD/i386 does, for example.

        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>