freebsd stable - Feb 2005 - HEADS UP: netipx mega-MFC (1/2)

I've just merged a fairly large set of changes to the netipx tree from
HEAD to RELENG_5.  These primarily consist of structural changes required
for the locking of the netipx protocol, but excludes the locking changes
themselves.  The theory is we'll let these changes settle for a few days,
then bring the locking changes in in time for 5.4-RELEASE.  While these
changes have been tested in HEAD, and have been in the tree generally for
at least a month, netipx doesn't get a lot of exercise so there may be
problems.  Please let me know if you experience any.

I have received at least one report that netipx is still not working with
Mars in RELENG_5.  I hope to follow up on that report shortly.
Unfortunately, I don't have a significant local IPX setup to test with, so
have to release on third party reports.  In general, when reporting netipx
issues, it would be very helpful if you could indicate whether whatever
problem you're experiencing occurs in the 4.x tree, in 5.x before my
recent changes, and 5.x after my recent changes.

Thanks,

Robert N M Watson

On Friday 25 February 2005 08:55 am, Robert Watson
wrote:
> I've just merged a fairly large set of changes to the netipx tree from
> HEAD to RELENG_5.  These primarily consist of structural changes required
> for the locking of the netipx protocol, but excludes the locking changes
> themselves.  The theory is we'll let these changes settle for a few
days,
> then bring the locking changes in in time for 5.4-RELEASE.  While these
> changes have been tested in HEAD, and have been in the tree generally for
> at least a month, netipx doesn't get a lot of exercise so there may be
> problems.  Please let me know if you experience any.
I updated to 5.3-stable this afternoon.  Attempting to boot ended in a panic 
(IIRC it was a signal 18).  I could boot to single user mode so I removed all 
the Netware stuff from /boot/loader.conf and from /etc/rc.conf and tried 
again, I then had no problems.  I didn't have time for further
investigation,
but it appears that something in the Netware support is extremely not right.  
I expect to have more time to investigate this on Monday, because after 
upgrading a Netware server, its NFS server is not playing nice with the BSD 
NFS client, and I've got to get something working to allow us to get our 
FreeBSD web server talking to the Netware file server again.  

I'm wasn't planning to be near that system again until Monday, although
if you
need details about my configuration I can dig them out remotely and send them 
to you.  I'm not brave enough to risk another panic when I'm not
physically
there to reset the system, but if you are willing to work on it this weekend 
I'm willing to drive over there and test it.  I would REALLY like to see the
Netware stuff working in 5.4R.

A few weeks ago I had the same panic when I tried to set up Netware support on 
5.3-Release.  It went away when I updated to -stable then (I believe it was 
around Jan 24), but the packets going out on the wire were not quite right, 
so I couldn't actually use it for networking.  

- Bob