dumpdev in loader.conf vs rc.d/dumpon

[Conrad Meyer]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 7:37 AM, Andriy Gapon <avg at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> I have recently discovered 'dumpdev' kernel environment variable that is
> settable, for example, from loader.conf.  To me it *seems* that this variable
> has to be set to a device name / path without the leading '/dev'.

Why?

> If that's so,
> then rc.d/dumpon must prepend '/dev' when passing the value of 'dumpdev' to
> dumpon(8).

dumpon(8) opens the configured file (accessible in the normal
namespace, i.e. "/dev/ada0s1b") and uses a magical ioctl on the device
to configure it as the dump device.  This is all documented in
dumpon(8).  Additionally, dumpon.c is short and quite legible.

I don't see etc/rc.d/dumpon prepending /dev to anything.

Best,
Conrad