NFS installkernel broke with "make: don't know how to make bsd.README. Stop"

[David Wolfskill]

OK; with a lot of help from Marcel Moolenaar (thanks!!!), it turns out
that the kernel configuration file (/usr/src/sys/i386/conf/JANUS) didn't
exist -- more accurately, there was no file with that path on janus.

Here's how that happened, and why it used to work:

My /usr/src is a CVS working directory; it's repo is my local private
mirror.  I also keep my kernel configs in CVS, but I don't pollute the
FreeBSD repo for that; instead, I create symlinks in
/usr/src/sys/i386/conf pointing to kernel config files that live in
/usr/local/src/kernels -- more specifically, they pointe dto
/usr/local/src/kernels/stable/{BUNRAB,JANUS,FREEBEAST,LAPTOP_30W...}.

Accordingly, I had a dummy (empty) file with the path
/usr/local/src/kernels/stable/JANUS on janus -- janus, after all, is not
the machine where the kernel gets built, so the contents of the file are
not especially relevant at install time -- just (as Marcel pointed out)
existence.

But now that RELENG_5 is moving toward -STABLE, I thought I should 
clarify the names a bit, so on the machines where I build kernels, I
changed "stable/" to "FreeBSD-4/" and "current/" to "FreeBSD-5/" under
/usr/local/src/kernels.  And I changed the symlinks under
/usr/src/sys/i386/conf to match.

Now, bunrab runs an automounter, and bunrab:/usr/local/src points
to the automounter mount point for freebeast.  Thus, when there was
a reference to /usr/local/src/kernels/FreeBSD-4/BUNRAB, it pointed to
the real config file.

However, janus does not run an automounter (by intent).  Rather,
back in December 2001, I had created that emtpy
/usr/local/src/kernels/stabe/JANUS file so the "make installkernel"
would work, but naturally, I had forgotten about it by now.  :-{

And we now see:
janus(4.10-S)[1] uname -a
FreeBSD janus.catwhisker.org 4.10-STABLE FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE #74: Sun Aug 22 06:02:38 PDT 2004     root at freebeast.catwhisker.org:/common/S1/obj/usr/src/sys/JANUS  i386
janus(4.10-S)[2] 

Marcel, I owe you a beverage of choice.  :-)

[And some folks claim that open source software doesn't have enough
support!  Ha!]

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Evidence of curmudgeonliness:  becoming irritated with the usage of the
word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network
performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency."