Proposal for making the kernel packages preserve old copies

[Kyle Evans]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 2:28 PM Brad Davis <brd at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2018, at 9:58 AM, Guido Falsi wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've finally cleaned up a local patch I've been using and sent it as a
> > code review:
> >
> > https://reviews.freebsd.org/D17119
> >
> >
> > As stated in the subject this patch uses a deinstall script to make the
> > kernel packages copy the kernel directory to kernel.old when
> > deinstalling. This leaves a fallback kernel on the system when
> > upgrading, which I find quite useful.
> >
> > I intentionally made it mimic the "make installkernel" behavior.
> >
> > I did not add any reviewers in the phabric review since I don't know who
> > I should ask, but I'd like to get some feedback about this.
>
> Hi Guido,
>
> Good idea, but there is a different plan in the works.  Because potentially there is the desire to keep many kernels around.  So we are going to name all the kernels kernel.version and the loader I believe already knows how to find them.  Allan? Kyle? Do you know what the status is here?
>

lualoader supports a "kernels_autodetect" option. One can stuff
kernels_autodetect="YES" in loader.conf(5) and we'll enumerate all
directories in /boot that contain a 'kernel'  file and throw them in
the kernel list.

I'm still 50/50 on enabling kernels_autodetect by default due to
systems where the I/O is just too heavy, but I suspect a lot of those
cases might also bypass the loader menu and effectively not need to
autodetect.

Thanks,

Kyle Evans