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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!gatech!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!nntp.coast.net!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news99.sunet.se!news.uni-c.dk!news From: erik@mediator.uni-c.dk (Erik Bertelsen) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: Re: Help! NetBSD doesn't recognize my ethernet card! Date: 13 Feb 1996 10:14:23 +0100 Organization: UNI-C Lines: 29 Sender: erik@mediator.uni-c.dk Message-ID: <si7mxr1tao.fsf@mediator.uni-c.dk> References: <4fj0no$dac@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <4fkjvp$c7f@carol.fwi.uva.nl> <4fll8g$btc@sundog.tiac.net> <4floja$t6j@Radon.Stanford.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: mediator.uni-c.dk In-reply-to: yue@heron.Stanford.EDU's message of 11 Feb 1996 21:54:50 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1 > Huh? Are these parameters hard-coded into the kernel? Why? Because the kernel probes and configures the hardware before it has access to any file system. Because the kernel may need to use the network to actually mount a file system, e.g. in the case of a diskless client booting with an NFS mounted root file system. Because the initial installation floppy must be bootable to set up your disk system, and before you have BSD running you may not be able to change the settings in the file system on the installation floppy. But I don't think that it absolutely must be this way. If I recall correctly, you may change device settings in the initial boot dialog when booting FreeBSD. This may - however - not apply to all ports of NetBSD. On a NetBSD/Mac68k you can't use the keyboard before the kernel has probed the ADB subsystem and initialized its driver. Anyway I tend to recommend that after the initial installation of NetBSD you create a kernel configuration file that matches your environment and then build a kernel based on this. This will also allow you to get rid of unused drivers and get rid of a lot of probe failures for absent devices that you typically get when booting a GENERIC kernel on a PC. regards Erik Bertelsen.