On Sun, Mar 26, 2006 at 11:16:37PM -0800, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> It was recently pointed out that a few commands (vmstat, netstat)
> require a kernel file (/netbsd) in the root filesystem in order to
> provide, for example, accurate statistics.

Are you sure ? Can you give examples ? AFAIK these commands uses
sysctl to get the statistics on live systems, /netbsd (or the kernel
binary specified by -N) is used only when working on crashdumps.

I don't have a /netbsd on my Xen domUs, and didn't notice missing
functionalities with netstat/vmstat

> 
> There was also the point recently about how some userland tools could be
> made more "port-independent" if they didn't grovel around in memory.  
> (E.g. the fact that some tools may be sensitive to a different size for
> paddr_t used on different MIPS ports.)
> 
> The need for a /netbsd kernel is particularly onerous for some platforms
> where disk space is at a premium.
> 
> I'm wondering whether there is a compelling reason why we shouldn't
> convert new versions of the tools to read these values out of kernfs
> special files.  This would provide increased portability and remove the
> reliance on having a /netbsd that matches the loaded kernel.

The way to do this on a live system is to use sysctl to collect the
informations. If netstat or vmstat still requires to read kernel memory
to get some info, it's probably better to add the sysctl nodes to retrieve
them than to add kernfs nodes.

> 
> The only drawback I can think of is that  some of these tools operate on
> crash dumps, and a kernfs reader wouldn't be able to do that.  If that
> functionality is important, could it be provided by gdb scripts or
> similar?  And would folks find that an acceptable solution, or is the
> ability for these tools to operate on crashdumps themselves an immutable
> requirement?  Am I missing something else?

This is a very important functionality, and I think it should be keept in
these tools (no need to make it harder for sysadmins), but the
kernel binary is only needed to do post-mortem analysis (or at last,
should)

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--