which is the correct way to enter variables on the boot loader on dragonFly ?

[nacho Lariguet]

-     whatever=whateverelse ... ?
- set whatever=whateverelse ... ?

For example: if I set [set kern.kms_columns=-1] or just set [kern.kms_columns=-1] then with the show command I can see the kernel variable is shown in either case.

I always did [whatever=whateverelse] on dragonFly because the first time I tried it I used [set whatever=whateverelse] since I previously toyed a bit with freeBSD and its handbook said so IIRC. Although our handbook also states [set whatever=whateverelse] in https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/Booting/, I started to use the [whatever=whateverelse] shorter form because when I did enter [set drm/radeon_load="yes"] instead of [drm/radeon_load="yes"] it was not honored on boot.

I presume module (drivers) should be flagged to load on boot via [whatever=whateverelse] ... am I correct ?

In other words: like I am confusing kernel variables with module flags right ?

PS: By the way, when I enter some variables and then enter menu<ENTER> and wait for the loader to boot I get the expected results. But if I enter boot<ENTER> instead of menu<ENTER> nothing is honored at all. The man page for loader @ https://man.dragonflybsd.org/?command=loader&section=8 states that "boot: 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 ...". It does not mention whether the previously entered variables should be honored or not, or in other words, it is not clear if entering boot<ENTER> goes the same way as menu<ENTER>, ie: multi-user mode.