Locking a file backed mdconfig into memory

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 07:42:47PM -0700, Dave Hayes wrote:
> Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd at gmail.com> writes:
> > This is how I do it in my quickie loader.rc:
> >  include /boot/loader.4th
> >  set vfs.root.mountfrom="ufs:/dev/md0"
> >  load /kernel
> >  load -t mfs_root /mfsroot
> >  start
> 
> I used to do exactly this back at FreeBSD 4.11 to boot off a cdrom. 
> Nice to know it still works this way. 
> 
> Jeremy Chadwick <freebsd at jdc.parodius.com> writes:
> > However, what I'm having trouble understanding is what exactly
> > preload_search_info() looks for and how all this actually connects
> > and works.  It appears to me that there are specific drivers located in
> > src/sys/dev that are KLD-supported and others which are expected to be
> > included in the kernel statically.
> 
> Maybe this confusion explains why /dev/md0c is giving me random crashes
> at the moment? 
> 
> Of course, another theory might be the size of my initial ramdisk
> (300Mb). Would there any known bug where booting off a large ramdisk
> causes unreadable panics to flash past the console too rapidly to view?

Is the mfsroot file compressed (.gz extension)?  Reason I ask is that
the OP states he's using RELENG_7...

http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install_7.html#step7

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |