From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Dave Eckhardt <davide+p9@cs.cmu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:42:06 -0400
Message-Id: <20070810224226.78CE45B71F@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Subject: [9fans] meaning of "*nomp=" has reversed
Topicbox-Message-UUID: a65babcc-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

I have an odd machine which doesn't work right in the brave new APIC
world (for example, VESA mode can draw windows and menus but not paint
the cursor...?).

Anyway, last year I figured out that adding "*nomp=" to plan9.ini would
work around whatever it was.  I just pulled, and was surprised to see
the world revert to a sad state.  Eventually I noticed the kernel
chatting about the LAPIC during boot and investigated.

Now archmp.c:identify() doesn't only check for the existence of a *nomp
line but also feeds the right hand side to strtol().  It appears that if
there is no right hand side, strtol() returns 0 and the effect is as if
there were no *nomp line--which is a little counterintuitive.

Looking around it seems like *nomce is like *nomp, but *noetherprobe,
*nousbprobe, *nobios, *pcibios, *nopcirouting, *norealmode, etc., all are
the "old way" (presence is all that matters, not the right hand side).

Isn't there an argument for all of these working the same way?

Dave Eckhardt