Original message is at end of this one.
Thanks to these people, who promptly replied:
"Dr. Tom Blinn, 603-884-0646" <tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com>
Mark Ray <Caprica7_at_aol.com>
Alan Davis <Davis_at_Tessco.Com>
David Warren <warren_at_atmos.washington.edu>
My question was not precise enough, which led all but one responder (Dr.
Blinn) to provide few information which I did not already know. Here is
what they said anyway:
############
David Warren: Generally if you have a root or usr that is advfs, the
option will not show up. Otherwise it does (assuming you have the kernel
modules installed)
############
Alan Davis: If you look at the manpage for doconfig, it lists the files
and directories that are referenced during the kernel build.
############
Mark Ray: If you change directory over to "/usr/sys/conf", you'll find a
file there
with your machine name all in capital letters. This is your machine's
kernel
configuration file wherein is listed -- or your can insert into it --
every
device and option known to DU. Everytime you "doconfig", it's this file
that
gets called to do the actual building.
############
Dr Blinn actually provided informations which were a good starting
point, which led me to find out what I wanted, after some experiments on
my own. Here is Tom's reply:
There is a kernel options database file, but the format isn't documented
and
things that are kernel options understand how to get registered.
Look in /usr/var/kernel_options where you should find several files.
One of
them is the .db file which is the database. On my system (V4.0E) there
is
also a .hlp file that you can look at, but it might not be useful.
There is a program that doconfig runs that looks at the file and
generates the
menu. I believe it's supposed to know whether AdvFS is optional or
mandatory
for your system, but if you've managed to re-install AdvFS "from
scratch", the
data that gets looked at for that information may have been lost.
If you know you need AdvFS in your kernel, just select it in the menu.
By the way, doconfig *is* a shell script; you can read it and figure out
much
of what it is doing. You might be able to tell how it knows whether
AdvFS is
mandatory for your system.
Tom
Finally, here is my own conclusion:
doconfig call the /usr/sbin/kopt binary in order to list the selectable
kernel options. The kopt(8) man page is, alas, terse, and does not
specify where kopt obtains the list of options. By using the strings
command on the kopt binary, I was able to determine that (on my DU 4.0D
system) the /usr/share/lib/kernel_options/kernel_options.db contains the
various kernel options known on the system. This is a nicely
self-documented text file, which list options, along with their status
(mandatory, optional, zombie - see the file for explanations).
Basically, all I had to do to stop ADVFS from being presented in
doconfig's menu was to change it's status from Optional to Mandatory.
Changes to this file take effect immediately, upon next invocation of
doconfig.
Yet to be explained is how it managed to get an optional status in the
first place, but this is another story... ;-)
Thanks once again to respondents.
CV
############# original message ################
Hello DU admins,
I'm looking for explanations on where do the various kernel options
presented in the doconfig menu come from. I already know the basics: the
packages selected during a DU installation have an influence on
available options. More specifically, I'm trying to figure out what
directory or file does doconfig browse to build the list of available
options.
After manually reinstalling ADVFS-related packages that I suspected were
broken (horror story - I save you the details...), I'm ending up having
"Advanced File System (ADVFS)" as a kernel option in doconfig, which
puzzles me a bit. Previously on this system, as on our other DU systems,
ADVFS did not show up as an option in doconfig.
Any hint will be greatly appreciated! TIA
===============================================
Charles Vachon tel: (418) 627-6355 x2760
email: cvachon2_at_mrn.gouv.qc.ca
Administrateur de système
FRCQ/Ministère des Ressources
Naturelles du Québec
===============================================
Received on Wed Feb 10 1999 - 05:59:16 NZDT