Subject: Boot question
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis@mcmanis.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 04/10/2000 23:23:18
I apologize if this is the wrong list to ask this question, if so let me 
know and I'll forward it there.

I'm looking into a problem with the boot program in the VAX port. My 
-current is in-sync to 4/1/00.

The issue I'm running into is that boot (at least on VAX) is supposed to 
try to boot 'netbsd' then 'netbsd.gz' then some other things. It can 
successfully boot whatever the first file is, but running through the loop 
again fails.

I've tracked it down to some nasty memory/stack corruption and I've been 
winding my way through the libsa code to see where things go south. The 
current candidate is the rpc/nfs code.

One of the things that is really annoying about this code is that it 
doesn't use well known RPC code, instead it tries to manufacture mount and 
NFS packets "on-the-fly" as it were and send those out on the network.

My question is what is the root of this strange design? I'm probably going 
to write a small and verifiable set of RPC functions into libsa that are 
both portable and readable (I've worked on RPC in the past) and they should 
do things in a somewhat more predictable way. If nothing else it will help 
me understand the problem.

If I'm successful and I make things better to my taste, where do I go from 
there? File a PR?

--Chuck