NetBSD Problem Report #58952

From paul@whooppee.com  Thu Jan  2 15:22:40 2025
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Message-Id: <20250102152238.2632B5E33C5@speedy.whooppee.com>
Date: Thu,  2 Jan 2025 07:22:38 -0800 (PST)
From: paul@whooppee.com
Reply-To: paul@whooppee.com
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Subject: boot selector: view options without executing them
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>Number:         58952
>Category:       port-i386
>Synopsis:       boot selector: view options without executing them
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    kern-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Thu Jan 02 15:25:00 +0000 2025
>Last-Modified:  Sat Jan 04 00:20:01 +0000 2025
>Originator:     Paul Goyette
>Release:        NetBSD 10.99.12
>Organization:
+---------------------+--------------------------+----------------------+
| Paul Goyette (.sig) | PGP Key fingerprint:     | E-mail addresses:    |
| (Retired)           | 1B11 1849 721C 56C8 F63A | paul@whooppee.com    |
| Software Developer  | 6E2E 05FD 15CE 9F2D 5102 | pgoyette@netbsd.org  |
| & Network Engineer  |                          | pgoyette99@gmail.com |
+---------------------+--------------------------+----------------------+
>Environment:


System: NetBSD speedy.whooppee.com 10.99.12 NetBSD 10.99.12 (SPEEDY 2024-12-14 04:11:35 UTC) #0: Sat Dec 14 11:32:20 UTC 2024 paul@speedy.whooppee.com:/build/netbsd-local/obj/amd64/sys/arch/amd64/compile/SPEEDY amd64
Architecture: x86_64
Machine: amd64
>Description:
It would be useful to be able to display the details behind a boot menu
entry (or, indeed, the entire boot.cfg).  One might easily use this to
enter a custom command based on an existing menu option (but needing a
small change?).

A "dump" command with no options could display the entire boot.cfg file
(possibly passed through a pager/more if possible), while "dump <n>"
could display the command list associated with menu entry #n (pager is
less important here).

>How-To-Repeat:

>Fix:


>Release-Note:

>Audit-Trail:

From: Paul Goyette <paul@whooppee.com>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/58952: boot selector: view options without executing them
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2025 08:14:38 -0800 (PST)

 This PR refers to the bootxx program (I think) which processes the
 boot.cfg file.  It does NOT refer to the MBR boot selector.  :-)

From: Martin Husemann <martin@duskware.de>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/58952: boot selector: view options without executing them
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2025 17:23:32 +0100

 Would something like this be good enough?

  - use 0 to drop to the boot prompt
  - use a new command (like "showconfig" or whatever) to dump the full boot.cfg
    file
  - use a new command (like "paste 1") to copy the last part (after the ":")
    of menu item 1 into the edit/line buffer

 Also I always wondered if we have a way to return from the boot prompt
 to the menu display.

 Martin

From: Paul Goyette <paul@whooppee.com>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/58952: boot selector: view options without executing them
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2025 08:40:55 -0800 (PST)

 On Thu, 2 Jan 2025, Martin Husemann via gnats wrote:

 > Would something like this be good enough?
 >
 >  - use 0 to drop to the boot prompt
 >  - use a new command (like "showconfig" or whatever) to dump the full boot.cfg
 >    file
 >  - use a new command (like "paste 1") to copy the last part (after the ":")
 >    of menu item 1 into the edit/line buffer
 >
 > Also I always wondered if we have a way to return from the boot prompt
 > to the menu display.

 I envisioned something like

 show [ dev | default | timeout | clear | banner [#n] | menu [#n] | userconf ]

 Although the 'paste n' option sounds very useful,  :-)

From: mlelstv@serpens.de (Michael van Elst)
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/58952: boot selector: view options without executing them
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2025 18:23:59 -0000 (UTC)

 gnats-admin@NetBSD.org ("Martin Husemann via gnats") writes:

 > Also I always wondered if we have a way to return from the boot prompt
 > to the menu display.

 Execute the menu command.

From: Paul Goyette <paul@whooppee.com>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/58952: boot selector: view options without executing them
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2025 16:15:51 -0800 (PST)

 > This PR refers to the bootxx program (I think) which processes the
 > boot.cfg file.  It does NOT refer to the MBR boot selector.  :-)

 For efi-based port-amd64 this is the file /efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi 
 where /efi is the mount-point/root of the msdos/efi filesystem.

>Unformatted:

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