.\" Copyright (c) 1999 Daniel C. Sobral
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
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.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd October 2, 2020
.Dt LOADER 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm loader
.Nd kernel bootstrapping final stage
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The program called
.Nm
is the final stage of
.Fx Ns 's
kernel bootstrapping process.
On IA32 (i386) architectures, it is a
.Pa BTX
client.
It is linked statically to
.Xr libstand 3
and usually located in the directory
.Pa /boot .
.Pp
It provides a scripting language that can be used to
automate tasks, do pre-configuration or assist in recovery
procedures.
This scripting language is roughly divided in
two main components.
The smaller one is a set of commands
designed for direct use by the casual user, called "builtin
commands" for historical reasons.
The main drive behind these commands is user-friendliness.
The bigger component is an
.Tn ANS
Forth compatible Forth interpreter based on FICL, by
.An John Sadler .
.Pp
During initialization,
.Nm
will probe for a console and set the
.Va console
variable, or set it to serial console
.Pq Dq Li comconsole
if the previous boot stage used that.
If multiple consoles are selected, they will be listed separated by spaces.
Then, devices are probed,
.Va currdev
and
.Va loaddev
are set, and
.Va LINES
is set to 24.
Next,
.Tn FICL
is initialized, the builtin words are added to its vocabulary, and
.Pa /boot/boot.4th
is processed if it exists.
No disk switching is possible while that file is being read.
The inner interpreter
.Nm
will use with
.Tn FICL
is then set to
.Ic interpret ,
which is
.Tn FICL Ns 's
default.
After that,
.Pa /boot/loader.rc
is processed if available.
These files are processed through the
.Ic include
command, which reads all of them into memory before processing them,
making disk changes possible.
.Pp
At this point, if an
.Ic autoboot
has not been tried, and if
.Va autoboot_delay
is not set to
.Dq Li NO
(not case sensitive), then an
.Ic autoboot
will be tried.
If the system gets past this point,
.Va prompt
will be set and
.Nm
will engage interactive mode.
Please note that historically even when
.Va autoboot_delay
is set to
.Dq Li 0
user will be able to interrupt autoboot process by pressing some key
on the console while kernel and modules are being loaded.
In some
cases such behaviour may be undesirable, to prevent it set
.Va autoboot_delay
to
.Dq Li -1 ,
in this case
.Nm
will engage interactive mode only if
.Ic autoboot
has failed.
.Sh BUILTIN COMMANDS
In
.Nm ,
builtin commands take parameters from the command line.
Presently,
the only way to call them from a script is by using
.Pa evaluate
on a string.
If an error condition occurs, an exception will be generated,
which can be intercepted using
.Tn ANS
Forth exception handling
words.
If not intercepted, an error message will be displayed and
the interpreter's state will be reset, emptying the stack and restoring
interpreting mode.
.Pp
The builtin commands available are:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
.It Ic autoboot Op Ar seconds Op Ar prompt
Proceeds to bootstrap the system after a number of seconds, if not
interrupted by the user.
Displays a countdown prompt
warning the user the system is about to be booted,
unless interrupted by a key press.
The kernel will be loaded first if necessary.
Defaults to 10 seconds.
.Pp
.It Ic bcachestat
Displays statistics about disk cache usage.
For debugging only.
.Pp
.It Ic boot
.It Ic boot Ar kernelname Op Cm ...
.It Ic boot Fl flag Cm ...
Immediately proceeds to bootstrap the system, loading the kernel
if necessary.
Any flags or arguments are passed to the kernel, but they
must precede the kernel name, if a kernel name is provided.
.Pp
.Em WARNING :
The behavior of this builtin is changed if
.Xr loader.4th 8
is loaded.
.Pp
.It Ic echo Xo
.Op Fl n
.Op Aq message
.Xc
Displays text on the screen.
A new line will be printed unless
.Fl n
is specified.
.Pp
.It Ic heap
Displays memory usage statistics.
For debugging purposes only.
.Pp
.It Ic help Op topic Op subtopic
Shows help messages read from
.Pa /boot/loader.help .
The special topic
.Em index
will list the topics available.
.Pp
.It Ic include Ar file Op Ar
Process script files.
Each file, in turn, is completely read into memory,
and then each of its lines is passed to the command line interpreter.
If any error is returned by the interpreter, the include
command aborts immediately, without reading any other files, and
returns an error itself (see
.Sx ERRORS ) .
.Pp
.It Ic load Xo
.Op Fl t Ar type
.Ar file Cm ...
.Xc
Loads a kernel, kernel loadable module (kld), disk image,
or file of opaque contents tagged as being of the type
.Ar type .
Kernel and modules can be either in a.out or ELF format.
Any arguments passed after the name of the file to be loaded
will be passed as arguments to that file.
Use the
.Li md_image
type to make the kernel create a file-backed
.Xr md 4
disk.
This is useful for booting from a temporary rootfs.
Currently, argument passing does not work for the kernel.
.Pp
.It Ic load_geli Xo
.Op Fl n Ar keyno
.Ar prov Ar file
.Xc
Loads a
.Xr geli 8
encryption keyfile for the given provider name.
The key index can be specified via
.Ar keyno
or will default to zero.
.Pp
.It Ic ls Xo
.Op Fl l
.Op Ar path
.Xc
Displays a listing of files in the directory
.Ar path ,
or the root directory if
.Ar path
is not specified.
If
.Fl l
is specified, file sizes will be shown too.
.Pp
.It Ic lsdev Op Fl v
Lists all of the devices from which it may be possible to load modules,
as well as ZFS pools.
If
.Fl v
is specified, more details are printed, including ZFS pool information
in a format that resembles
.Nm zpool Cm status
output.
.Pp
.It Ic lsmod Op Fl v
Displays loaded modules.
If
.Fl v
is specified, more details are shown.
.Pp
.It Ic lszfs Ar filesystem
A ZFS extended command that can be used to explore the ZFS filesystem
hierarchy in a pool.
Lists the immediate children of the
.Ar filesystem .
The filesystem hierarchy is rooted at a filesystem with the same name
as the pool.
.Pp
.It Ic more Ar file Op Ar
Display the files specified, with a pause at each
.Va LINES
displayed.
.Pp
.It Ic pnpscan Op Fl v
Scans for Plug-and-Play devices.
This is not functional at present.
.Pp
.It Ic read Xo
.Op Fl t Ar seconds
.Op Fl p Ar prompt
.Op Va variable
.Xc
Reads a line of input from the terminal, storing it in
.Va variable
if specified.
A timeout can be specified with
.Fl t ,
though it will be canceled at the first key pressed.
A prompt may also be displayed through the
.Fl p
flag.
.Pp
.It Ic reboot
Immediately reboots the system.
.Pp
.It Ic set Ar variable
.It Ic set Ar variable Ns = Ns Ar value
Set loader's environment variables.
.Pp
.It Ic show Op Va variable
Displays the specified variable's value, or all variables and their
values if
.Va variable
is not specified.
.Pp
.It Ic unload
Remove all modules from memory.
.Pp
.It Ic unset Va variable
Removes
.Va variable
from the environment.
.Pp
.It Ic \&?
Lists available commands.
.El
.Ss BUILTIN ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The
.Nm
has actually two different kinds of
.Sq environment
variables.
There are ANS Forth's
.Em environmental queries ,
and a separate space of environment variables used by builtins, which
are not directly available to Forth words.
It is the latter type that this section covers.
.Pp
Environment variables can be set and unset through the
.Ic set
and
.Ic unset
builtins, and can have their values interactively examined through the
use of the
.Ic show
builtin.
Their values can also be accessed as described in
.Sx BUILTIN PARSER .
.Pp
Notice that these environment variables are not inherited by any shell
after the system has been booted.
.Pp
A few variables are set automatically by
.Nm .
Others can affect the behavior of either
.Nm
or the kernel at boot.
Some options may require a value,
while others define behavior just by being set.
Both types of builtin variables are described below.
.Bl -tag -width bootfile
.It Va autoboot_delay
Number of seconds
.Ic autoboot
will wait before booting.
If this variable is not defined,
.Ic autoboot
will default to 10 seconds.
.Pp
If set to
.Dq Li NO ,
no
.Ic autoboot
will be automatically attempted after processing
.Pa /boot/loader.rc ,
though explicit
.Ic autoboot Ns 's
will be processed normally, defaulting to 10 seconds delay.
.Pp
If set to
.Dq Li 0 ,
no delay will be inserted, but user still will be able to interrupt
.Ic autoboot
process and escape into the interactive mode by pressing some key
on the console while kernel and
modules are being loaded.
.Pp
If set to
.Dq Li -1 ,
no delay will be inserted and
.Nm
will engage interactive mode only if
.Ic autoboot
has failed for some reason.
.It Va boot_askname
Instructs the kernel to prompt the user for the name of the root device
when the kernel is booted.
.It Va boot_cdrom
Instructs the kernel to try to mount the root file system from CD-ROM.
.It Va boot_ddb
Instructs the kernel to start in the DDB debugger, rather than
proceeding to initialize when booted.
.It Va boot_dfltroot
Instructs the kernel to mount the statically compiled-in root file system.
.It Va boot_gdb
Selects gdb-remote mode for the kernel debugger by default.
.It Va boot_multicons
Enables multiple console support in the kernel early on boot.
In a running system, console configuration can be manipulated
by the
.Xr conscontrol 8
utility.
.It Va boot_mute
All kernel console output is suppressed when console is muted.
In a running system, the state of console muting can be manipulated by the
.Xr conscontrol 8
utility.
.It Va boot_pause
During the device probe, pause after each line is printed.
.It Va boot_serial
Force the use of a serial console even when an internal console
is present.
.It Va boot_single
Prevents the kernel from initiating a multi-user startup; instead,
a single-user mode will be entered when the kernel has finished
device probing.
.It Va boot_verbose
Setting this variable causes extra debugging information to be printed
by the kernel during the boot phase.
.It Va bootfile
List of semicolon-separated search path for bootable kernels.
The default is
.Dq Li kernel .
.It Va comconsole_speed
Defines the speed of the serial console (i386 and amd64 only).
If the previous boot stage indicated that a serial console is in use
then this variable is initialized to the current speed of the console
serial port.
Otherwise it is set to 9600 unless this was overridden using the
.Va BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED
variable when
.Nm
was compiled.
Changes to the
.Va comconsole_speed
variable take effect immediately.
.It Va comconsole_port
Defines the base i/o port used to access console UART
(i386 and amd64 only).
If the variable is not set, its assumed value is 0x3F8, which
corresponds to PC port COM1, unless overridden by
.Va BOOT_COMCONSOLE_PORT
variable during the compilation of
.Nm .
Setting the
.Va comconsole_port
variable automatically set
.Va hw.uart.console
environment variable to provide a hint to kernel for location of the console.
Loader console is changed immediately after variable
.Va comconsole_port
is set.
.It Va comconsole_pcidev
Defines the location of a PCI device of the 'simple communication'
class to be used as the serial console UART (i386 and amd64 only).
The syntax of the variable is
.Li 'bus:device:function[:bar]' ,
where all members must be numeric, with possible
.Li 0x
prefix to indicate a hexadecimal value.
The
.Va bar
member is optional and assumed to be 0x10 if omitted.
The bar must decode i/o space.
Setting the variable
.Va comconsole_pcidev
automatically sets the variable
.Va comconsole_port
to the base of the selected bar, and hint
.Va hw.uart.console .
Loader console is changed immediately after variable
.Va comconsole_pcidev
is set.
.It Va console
Defines the current console or consoles.
Multiple consoles may be specified.
In that case, the first listed console will become the default console for
userland output (e.g.\& from
.Xr init 8 ) .
.It Va currdev
Selects the default device to loader the kernel from.
The syntax is:
.Dl Ic loader_device:
or
.Dl Ic zfs:dataset:
Examples:
.Dl Ic disk0p2:
.Dl Ic zfs:zroot/ROOT/default:
.It Va dumpdev
Sets the device for kernel dumps.
This can be used to ensure that a device is configured before the corresponding
.Va dumpdev
directive from
.Xr rc.conf 5
has been processed, allowing kernel panics that happen during the early stages
of boot to be captured.
.It Va init_chroot
See
.Xr init 8 .
.It Va init_exec
See
.Xr init 8 .
.It Va init_path
Sets the list of binaries which the kernel will try to run as the initial
process.
The first matching binary is used.
The default list is
.Dq Li /sbin/init:/sbin/oinit:/sbin/init.bak:\:/rescue/init .
.It Va init_script
See
.Xr init 8 .
.It Va init_shell
See
.Xr init 8 .
.It Va interpret
Has the value
.Dq Li OK
if the Forth's current state is interpreting.
.It Va LINES
Define the number of lines on the screen, to be used by the pager.
.It Va module_path
Sets the list of directories which will be searched for modules
named in a load command or implicitly required by a dependency.
The default value for this variable is
.Dq Li /boot/kernel;/boot/modules .
.It Va num_ide_disks
Sets the number of IDE disks as a workaround for some problems in
finding the root disk at boot.
This has been deprecated in favor of
.Va root_disk_unit .
.It Va prompt
Value of
.Nm Ns 's
prompt.
Defaults to
.Dq Li "${interpret}" .
If variable
.Va prompt
is unset, the default prompt is
.Ql > .
.It Va root_disk_unit
If the code which detects the disk unit number for the root disk is
confused, e.g.\& by a mix of SCSI and IDE disks, or IDE disks with
gaps in the sequence (e.g.\& no primary slave), the unit number can
be forced by setting this variable.
.It Va rootdev
By default the value of
.Va currdev
is used to set the root file system
when the kernel is booted.
This can be overridden by setting
.Va rootdev
explicitly.
.El
.Pp
Other variables are used to override kernel tunable parameters.
The following tunables are available:
.Bl -tag -width Va
.It Va efi.rt.disabled
Disable UEFI runtime services in the kernel, if applicable.
Runtime services are only available and used if the kernel is booted in a UEFI
environment.
.It Va hw.physmem
Limit the amount of physical memory the system will use.
By default the size is in bytes, but the
.Cm k , K , m , M , g
and
.Cm G
suffixes
are also accepted and indicate kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes
respectively.
An invalid suffix will result in the variable being ignored by the
kernel.
.It Va hw.pci.host_start_mem , hw.acpi.host_start_mem
When not otherwise constrained, this limits the memory start
address.
The default is 0x80000000 and should be set to at least size of the
memory and not conflict with other resources.
Typically, only systems without PCI bridges need to set this variable
since PCI bridges typically constrain the memory starting address
(and the variable is only used when bridges do not constrain this
address).
.It Va hw.pci.enable_io_modes
Enable PCI resources which are left off by some BIOSes or are not
enabled correctly by the device driver.
Tunable value set to ON (1) by default, but this may cause problems
with some peripherals.
.It Va kern.maxusers
Set the size of a number of statically allocated system tables; see
.Xr tuning 7
for a description of how to select an appropriate value for this
tunable.
When set, this tunable replaces the value declared in the kernel
compile-time configuration file.
.It Va kern.ipc.nmbclusters
Set the number of mbuf clusters to be allocated.
The value cannot be set below the default
determined when the kernel was compiled.
.It Va kern.ipc.nsfbufs
Set the number of
.Xr sendfile 2
buffers to be allocated.
Overrides
.Dv NSFBUFS .
Not all architectures use such buffers; see
.Xr sendfile 2
for details.
.It Va kern.maxswzone
Limits the amount of KVM to be used to hold swap
metadata, which directly governs the
maximum amount of swap the system can support,
at the rate of approximately 200 MB of swap space
per 1 MB of metadata.
This value is specified in bytes of KVA space.
If no value is provided, the system allocates
enough memory to handle an amount of swap
that corresponds to eight times the amount of
physical memory present in the system.
.Pp
Note that swap metadata can be fragmented,
which means that the system can run out of
space before it reaches the theoretical limit.
Therefore, care should be taken to not configure
more swap than approximately half of the
theoretical maximum.
.Pp
Running out of space for swap metadata can leave
the system in an unrecoverable state.
Therefore, you should only change
this parameter if you need to greatly extend the
KVM reservation for other resources such as the
buffer cache or
.Va kern.ipc.nmbclusters .
Modifies kernel option
.Dv VM_SWZONE_SIZE_MAX .
.It Va kern.maxbcache
Limits the amount of KVM reserved for use by the
buffer cache, specified in bytes.
The default maximum is 200MB on i386,
and 400MB on amd64.
This parameter is used to
prevent the buffer cache from eating too much
KVM in large-memory machine configurations.
Only mess around with this parameter if you need to
greatly extend the KVM reservation for other resources
such as the swap zone or
.Va kern.ipc.nmbclusters .
Note that
the NBUF parameter will override this limit.
Modifies
.Dv VM_BCACHE_SIZE_MAX .
.It Va kern.msgbufsize
Sets the size of the kernel message buffer.
The default limit of 96KB is usually sufficient unless
large amounts of trace data need to be collected
between opportunities to examine the buffer or
dump it to a file.
Overrides kernel option
.Dv MSGBUF_SIZE .
.It Va machdep.disable_mtrrs
Disable the use of i686 MTRRs (x86 only).
.It Va net.inet.tcp.tcbhashsize
Overrides the compile-time set value of
.Dv TCBHASHSIZE
or the preset default of 512.
Must be a power of 2.
.It Va twiddle_divisor
Throttles the output of the
.Sq twiddle
I/O progress indicator displayed while loading the kernel and modules.
This is useful on slow serial consoles where the time spent waiting for
these characters to be written can add up to many seconds.
The default is 1 (full speed); a value of 2 spins half as fast, and so on.
.It Va vm.kmem_size
Sets the size of kernel memory (bytes).
This overrides the value determined when the kernel was compiled.
Modifies
.Dv VM_KMEM_SIZE .
.It Va vm.kmem_size_min
.It Va vm.kmem_size_max
Sets the minimum and maximum (respectively) amount of kernel memory
that will be automatically allocated by the kernel.
These override the values determined when the kernel was compiled.
Modifies
.Dv VM_KMEM_SIZE_MIN
and
.Dv VM_KMEM_SIZE_MAX .
.El
.Ss ZFS FEATURES
.Nm
supports the following format for specifying ZFS filesystems which
can be used wherever
.Xr loader 8
refers to a device specification:
.Pp
.Ar zfs:pool/filesystem:
.Pp
where
.Pa pool/filesystem
is a ZFS filesystem name as described in
.Xr zfs 8 .
.Pp
If
.Pa /etc/fstab
does not have an entry for the root filesystem and
.Va vfs.root.mountfrom
is not set, but
.Va currdev
refers to a ZFS filesystem, then
.Nm
will instruct kernel to use that filesystem as the root filesystem.
.Ss BUILTIN PARSER
When a builtin command is executed, the rest of the line is taken
by it as arguments, and it is processed by a special parser which
is not used for regular Forth commands.
.Pp
This special parser applies the following rules to the parsed text:
.Bl -enum
.It
All backslash characters are preprocessed.
.Bl -bullet
.It
\eb , \ef , \er , \en and \et are processed as in C.
.It
\es is converted to a space.
.It
\ev is converted to
.Tn ASCII
11.
.It
\ez is just skipped.
Useful for things like
.Dq \e0xf\ez\e0xf .
.It
\e0xN and \e0xNN are replaced by the hex N or NN.
.It
\eNNN is replaced by the octal NNN
.Tn ASCII
character.
.It
\e" , \e' and \e$ will escape these characters, preventing them from
receiving special treatment in Step 2, described below.
.It
\e\e will be replaced with a single \e .
.It
In any other occurrence, backslash will just be removed.
.El
.It
Every string between non-escaped quotes or double-quotes will be treated
as a single word for the purposes of the remaining steps.
.It
Replace any
.Li $VARIABLE
or
.Li ${VARIABLE}
with the value of the environment variable
.Va VARIABLE .
.It
Space-delimited arguments are passed to the called builtin command.
Spaces can also be escaped through the use of \e\e .
.El
.Pp
An exception to this parsing rule exists, and is described in
.Sx BUILTINS AND FORTH .
.Ss BUILTINS AND FORTH
All builtin words are state-smart, immediate words.
If interpreted, they behave exactly as described previously.
If they are compiled, though,
they extract their arguments from the stack instead of the command line.
.Pp
If compiled, the builtin words expect to find, at execution time, the
following parameters on the stack:
.D1 Ar addrN lenN ... addr2 len2 addr1 len1 N
where
.Ar addrX lenX
are strings which will compose the command line that will be parsed
into the builtin's arguments.
Internally, these strings are concatenated in from 1 to N,
with a space put between each one.
.Pp
If no arguments are passed, a 0
.Em must
be passed, even if the builtin accepts no arguments.
.Pp
While this behavior has benefits, it has its trade-offs.
If the execution token of a builtin is acquired (through
.Ic '
or
.Ic ['] ) ,
and then passed to
.Ic catch
or
.Ic execute ,
the builtin behavior will depend on the system state
.Bf Em
at the time
.Ic catch
or
.Ic execute
is processed!
.Ef
This is particularly annoying for programs that want or need to
handle exceptions.
In this case, the use of a proxy is recommended.
For example:
.Dl : (boot) boot ;
.Sh FICL
.Tn FICL
is a Forth interpreter written in C, in the form of a forth
virtual machine library that can be called by C functions and vice
versa.
.Pp
In
.Nm ,
each line read interactively is then fed to
.Tn FICL ,
which may call
.Nm
back to execute the builtin words.
The builtin
.Ic include
will also feed
.Tn FICL ,
one line at a time.
.Pp
The words available to
.Tn FICL
can be classified into four groups.
The
.Tn ANS
Forth standard words, extra
.Tn FICL
words, extra
.Fx
words, and the builtin commands;
the latter were already described.
The
.Tn ANS
Forth standard words are listed in the
.Sx STANDARDS
section.
The words falling in the two other groups are described in the
following subsections.
.Ss FICL EXTRA WORDS
.Bl -tag -width wid-set-super
.It Ic .env
.It Ic .ver
.It Ic -roll
.It Ic 2constant
.It Ic >name
.It Ic body>
.It Ic compare
This is the STRING word set's
.Ic compare .
.It Ic compile-only
.It Ic endif
.It Ic forget-wid
.It Ic parse-word
.It Ic sliteral
This is the STRING word set's
.Ic sliteral .
.It Ic wid-set-super
.It Ic w@
.It Ic w!
.It Ic x.
.It Ic empty
.It Ic cell-
.It Ic -rot
.El
.Ss FREEBSD EXTRA WORDS
.Bl -tag -width XXXXXXXX
.It Ic \&$ Pq --
Evaluates the remainder of the input buffer, after having printed it first.
.It Ic \&% Pq --
Evaluates the remainder of the input buffer under a
.Ic catch
exception guard.
.It Ic .#
Works like
.Ic "."
but without outputting a trailing space.
.It Ic fclose Pq Ar fd --
Closes a file.
.It Ic fkey Pq Ar fd -- char
Reads a single character from a file.
.It Ic fload Pq Ar fd --
Processes a file
.Em fd .
.It Ic fopen Pq Ar addr len mode Li -- Ar fd
Opens a file.
Returns a file descriptor, or \-1 in case of failure.
The
.Ar mode
parameter selects whether the file is to be opened for read access, write
access, or both.
The constants
.Dv O_RDONLY , O_WRONLY ,
and
.Dv O_RDWR
are defined in
.Pa /boot/support.4th ,
indicating read only, write only, and read-write access, respectively.
.It Xo
.Ic fread
.Pq Ar fd addr len -- len'
.Xc
Tries to read
.Em len
bytes from file
.Em fd
into buffer
.Em addr .
Returns the actual number of bytes read, or -1 in case of error or end of
file.
.It Ic heap? Pq -- Ar cells
Return the space remaining in the dictionary heap, in cells.
This is not related to the heap used by dynamic memory allocation words.
.It Ic inb Pq Ar port -- char
Reads a byte from a port.
.It Ic key Pq -- Ar char
Reads a single character from the console.
.It Ic key? Pq -- Ar flag
Returns
.Ic true
if there is a character available to be read from the console.
.It Ic ms Pq Ar u --
Waits
.Em u
microseconds.
.It Ic outb Pq Ar port char --
Writes a byte to a port.
.It Ic seconds Pq -- Ar u
Returns the number of seconds since midnight.
.It Ic tib> Pq -- Ar addr len
Returns the remainder of the input buffer as a string on the stack.
.It Ic trace! Pq Ar flag --
Activates or deactivates tracing.
Does not work with
.Ic catch .
.El
.Ss FREEBSD DEFINED ENVIRONMENTAL QUERIES
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It arch-i386
.Ic TRUE
if the architecture is IA32.
.It FreeBSD_version
.Fx
version at compile time.
.It loader_version
.Nm
version.
.El
.Sh SECURITY
Access to the
.Nm
command line provides several ways of compromising system security,
including, but not limited to:
.Pp
.Bl -bullet
.It
Booting from removable storage, by setting the
.Va currdev
or
.Va loaddev
variables
.It
Executing binary of choice, by setting the
.Va init_path
or
.Va init_script
variables
.It
Overriding ACPI DSDT to inject arbitrary code into the ACPI subsystem
.El
.Pp
One can prevent unauthorized access
to the
.Nm
command line by setting the
.Va password ,
or setting
.Va autoboot_delay
to -1.
See
.Xr loader.conf 5
for details.
In order for this to be effective, one should also configure the firmware
(BIOS or UEFI) to prevent booting from unauthorized devices.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /usr/share/examples/bootforth/ -compact
.It Pa /boot/loader
.Nm
itself.
.It Pa /boot/boot.4th
Additional
.Tn FICL
initialization.
.It Pa /boot/defaults/loader.conf
.It Pa /boot/loader.4th
Extra builtin-like words.
.It Pa /boot/loader.conf
.It Pa /boot/loader.conf.local
.Nm
configuration files, as described in
.Xr loader.conf 5 .
.It Pa /boot/loader.rc
.Nm
bootstrapping script.
.It Pa /boot/loader.help
Loaded by
.Ic help .
Contains the help messages.
.It Pa /boot/support.4th
.Pa loader.conf
processing words.
.It Pa /usr/share/examples/bootforth/
Assorted examples.
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
Boot in single user mode:
.Pp
.Dl boot -s
.Pp
Load the kernel, a splash screen, and then autoboot in five seconds.
Notice that a kernel must be loaded before any other
.Ic load
command is attempted.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
load kernel
load splash_bmp
load -t splash_image_data /boot/chuckrulez.bmp
autoboot 5
.Ed
.Pp
Set the disk unit of the root device to 2, and then boot.
This would be needed in a system with two IDE disks,
with the second IDE disk hardwired to ada2 instead of ada1.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
set root_disk_unit=2
boot /boot/kernel/kernel
.Ed
.Pp
Set the default device used for loading a kernel from a ZFS filesystem:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
set currdev=zfs:tank/ROOT/knowngood:
.Ed
.Pp
.Sh ERRORS
The following values are thrown by
.Nm :
.Bl -tag -width XXXXX -offset indent
.It 100
Any type of error in the processing of a builtin.
.It -1
.Ic Abort
executed.
.It -2
.Ic Abort"
executed.
.It -56
.Ic Quit
executed.
.It -256
Out of interpreting text.
.It -257
Need more text to succeed -- will finish on next run.
.It -258
.Ic Bye
executed.
.It -259
Unspecified error.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr libstand 3 ,
.Xr loader.conf 5 ,
.Xr tuning 7 ,
.Xr boot 8 ,
.Xr btxld 8
.Sh STANDARDS
For the purposes of ANS Forth compliance, loader is an
.Bf Em
ANS Forth System with Environmental Restrictions, Providing
.Ef
.Bf Li
.No .( ,
.No :noname ,
.No ?do ,
parse, pick, roll, refill, to, value, \e, false, true,
.No <> ,
.No 0<> ,
compile\&, , erase, nip, tuck
.Ef
.Em and
.Li marker
.Bf Em
from the Core Extensions word set, Providing the Exception Extensions
word set, Providing the Locals Extensions word set, Providing the
Memory-Allocation Extensions word set, Providing
.Ef
.Bf Li
\&.s,
bye, forget, see, words,
\&[if],
\&[else]
.Ef
.Em and
.Li [then]
.Bf Em
from the Programming-Tools extension word set, Providing the
Search-Order extensions word set.
.Ef
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
first appeared in
.Fx 3.1 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
was written by
.An Michael Smith Aq msmith@FreeBSD.org .
.Pp
.Tn FICL
was written by
.An John Sadler Aq john_sadler@alum.mit.edu .
.Sh BUGS
The
.Ic expect
and
.Ic accept
words will read from the input buffer instead of the console.
The latter will be fixed, but the former will not.