freebsd stable - Jun 2006 - loader and ifconfig_*_name problem in 6.1-STABLE of 5 June

I upgraded via build/installworld from 6.1-PRERELEASE as of 27 Mars
to 6.1-STABLE 5 June, and encounterd 2 problems.

a) loader and kernel has some problem that lead to instant reboot upon
  loading the kernel.
  the problem was as follows:
  1) booting the new kernel with the old loader was fine.
    I did buildkernel and installkernel and rebooted in single user mode.
    It had no problems.
  2) loading the new kernel with the new loader made the machine reboot.
    After step (1), I did installworld and rebooted.
    It resulted in rebooting just after loader menu.
    I could escape to loader prompt and found that doing
    > unload
    > load kernel
    makes the machine reboot.
  3) loading the old kernel with the new loader can boot in single
    user mode.
    > unload
    > set module_path=/boot/kernel.old
    > load kernel
     (and some other necessary modules)
    > boot -s
    was fine (though, exiting in multi-user mode had problem around
    mountd and panic'ed with the new userland).

  I copied the old /boot/loader.old to /boot/loader as a workaround.
  I have
    CFLAGS= -O2 -pipe
    COPTFLAGS= -O2 -pipe
  and no CPUTYPE setting in /etc/make.conf, so I wonder what caused
  the problem.

b) pre-loading ng_ether.ko module and doing ifconfig name may
  have problem with ppp.

  I put the following in /etc/rc.conf
    ifconfig_sis0_name="net0"

  and changed device setting in /etc/ppp/ppp.conf as follows:
    set device PPPoE:net0

  This did not work and had the following error message in /var/log/messages:
    ppp[258]: tun0: Warning: net0: Cannot send a netgraph
    message: No such file or directory

  changing device setting to
    set device PPPoE:sis0

  or doing
    ngctl name sis0: net0

  could make ppp work.

  The problem may be caused by loading ng_ether.ko in loader.conf
  (I do not remember why I did this, though).
  If I did not do that, ng_ether module was loaded when ppp was invoked
  after interface rename and might have no problem.
  I did not verify this yet, though.

Hiroo Ono wrote:
> I upgraded via build/installworld from 6.1-PRERELEASE as of 27 Mars
> to 6.1-STABLE 5 June, and encounterd 2 problems.
  [ .. snip .. ]
>   I copied the old /boot/loader.old to /boot/loader as a workaround.
>   I have
>     CFLAGS= -O2 -pipe
>     COPTFLAGS= -O2 -pipe
Please remove these and re-test. The default is "-O2
-fno-strict-aliasing" which generates slightly different code in some
instances,

-- 
Michael Butler, CISSP
Security Architect
Protected Networks
http://www.protected-networks.net

At Tue, 06 Jun 2006 13:17:38 -0400,
Michael Butler wrote:
> 
> Hiroo Ono wrote:
> > I upgraded via build/installworld from 6.1-PRERELEASE as of 27 Mars
> > to 6.1-STABLE 5 June, and encounterd 2 problems.
> 
>   [ .. snip .. ]
> 
> >   I copied the old /boot/loader.old to /boot/loader as a workaround.
> >   I have
> >     CFLAGS= -O2 -pipe
> >     COPTFLAGS= -O2 -pipe
> 
> Please remove these and re-test. The default is "-O2
-fno-strict-aliasing" which generates slightly different code in some
instances,
Thank you.
I commented out above two lines from /etc/make.conf and did
build/installkernel, build/installworld again (a little
superfluous maybe).  So, the loader and the kernel must be built
with default options.

The result was same. Loading new kernel with the new loader reboots the
machine.

The CPU is an athlon (CPU lines from dmesg were as follows).
I do not remember what was the chipset now;

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+ (1403.19-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "AuthenticAMD"  Id = 0x662  Stepping = 2
 
Features=0x383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CM
OV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE>
  AMD Features=0xc0480800<SYSCALL,MP,MMX+,3DNow+,3DNow>