From robert@fledge.watson.org  Wed Mar 27 19:07:21 2002
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Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:05:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
To: hiten@uk.FreeBSD.org
Cc: current@FreeBSD.org, bug-followup@FreeBSD.org
In-Reply-To: <20020328004410.9310.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Some info on the kgmon(8) manual page (regarding current) needed

>Number:         36405
>Category:       docs
>Synopsis:       Re: Some info on the kgmon(8) manual page (regarding current) needed
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    gnats-admin
>State:          closed
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:  
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed Mar 27 19:10:03 PST 2002
>Closed-Date:    Thu Mar 28 16:37:39 PST 2002
>Last-Modified:  Wed Oct 26 05:02:30 GMT 2005
>Originator:     
>Release:        
>Organization:
>Environment:
>Description:
 On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Hiten Pandya wrote:
 
 > According to me, the utility shouldn't be using a hardcoded path to the
 > booting kernel, as this would affect kernels which were made by: 
 > 
 >   makeoptions   KERNEL=foo    #Build kernel "foo" and install "/foo"
 > 
 > What are your suggestions? 
 
 The utility doesn't appear to have any hard-coded paths in it at all.  It
 gets them from one of two places: getbootfile(), or the command line.  If
 getbootfile() is used then it's right.  If you specify it on the command
 line and that's wrong, it's your fault.  It's worth noting, as I did to
 Garance out-of-band, that the path returned by getbootfile() may be wrong
 for a variety of reasons, including:
 
 - The kernel at that path has been replaced for some or another reason,
   including kernel upgrade.
 
 - The file system root doesn't match that used by the boot loader, either
   because chroot() has occurred for the current process, or because the
   root and boot devices differ (e.g., network load of kernel, local root
   file system).
 
 getbootfile() is relatively unreliable, as such, but is a decent default. 
 
 > In any case, I will take the precautions which Giorgos has put in place,
 > and will produce the patches accordingly. :)
 
 I'd avoid your later changes involving describing how getbootfile() relies
 on sysctl in the kgmon(8) man page.  That's an implementation detail of
 the API, not of kgmon, and while it probably won't change, putting the
 information there increases the chances of it getting stale, as well as
 exposing system MIB information that has a well-documented API for
 accessing it.  Talking about the possible failure modes of the call
 probably is relevant, since that impacts correct functionality of
 kgmon(8).  Giorgos' patch, modulo reference to -N, is probably the right
 answer.
 
 Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Project
 robert@fledge.watson.org      NAI Labs, Safeport Network Services
 
>How-To-Repeat:
>Fix:
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
State-Changed-From-To: open->closed 
State-Changed-By: keramida 
State-Changed-When: Thu Mar 28 16:36:27 PST 2002 
State-Changed-Why:  
Followup to email misfiled as a PR. 

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=36405 
>Unformatted:
