"Post, Mark K" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Which leads to the question, if two sources of information conflict
> in some way, which one "wins?"  The first one?  The last one?
> Something else?  Can we have some specific examples that can be put
> into a HOWTO?  :)

The answer to your first question would be: it depends:)

First it should be noted that zipl does not perform any kind of check
on the actual contents of the kernel command line (it couldn't - only
the kernel itself knows about its parameters). All it does is pass
the concatenated text string to the kernel.

During IPL, the kernel startup routine parses the command line left
to right, evaluating each keyword or keyword/value pair and looking
for routines to handle each keyword. Parsing is handled by a generic
mechanism so there's no checking for conflicting input done either.

Only the routines which are used for keyword handling interpret the
actual parameters. As each device driver/kernel component implements
its own routines, there's no defined standard behavior on how to
handle conflicting information.

Example:

'dasd=' parameter: defines which DASD devices are automatically
activated during IPL. Specifying this keyword multiple times will
extend the list of devices.

'mem=' parameter: specifies how much main memory Linux should try to
use. Specifying this keyword multiple times will override previous
occurrences so that only the last one will be used.

To sum it up, there's no universally applicable way of telling what
will happen if keywords on the kernel command line provide conflicting
information.


Regards,
  Peter Oberparleiter

--
Peter Oberparleiter
Linux on zSeries Development
IBM Development Lab, Boeblingen/Germany

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