On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Darren Reed wrote:

> In some email I received from matthew green, sie wrote:
> [...]
> > sometimes the kernel image isn't available to the NetBSD userland
> > at all.  eg, a shark netbooted kernel doens't have to exist in
> > the machine's / at all.  i might have loaded my kernel over the
> > ethernet and then used a local root filesystem...  so while you can
> > add to the times when this _is_ available, you can never make it
> > always possible.
>
> Netbooting always seems to be the "forgotten child".
>
> The problem here is that it _may_ be the same or it _may not_, with no
> rule of thumb either way.  The safest thing might be to err on the side
> of caution and just have netbooting pass the kernel a null kernel name
> rather than what it's loaded

Or pass the kernel name as a URI. If it's a file, "file:/file/path" says
where it is. If it's tftp'd, "tftp://host/file".

To the extent our boot methods match standard URI types (file:, ftp:,
etc.) we should use the standard format. For other formats, we should make
up URI formats (like macosfile: for mac68k where the kernel is loaded off
of a MacOS file system).

Take care,

Bill