freebsd stable - Mar 2008 - "s/stable/broken/g"

And the party continues... 
When starting my usual environment, there is already the next pagefault 
kernel panic!

Tracking it down... it's the "type" keyword in devfs rules.
According
to the manpage, support for this was _not_ withdrawn. 
But actually, entering something like
	devfs rule apply type tape WHATEVER
crashes the system.

Dear all,

  I have two computers.

Both of them were running Release 5.5, and they were doing all that
is needed, and I was perfectly happy with this. 

Now, as we know, security support for Release 5.5 will terminate
during this spring, and as my computers are exposed to the Internet,
this means that I MUST upgrade, even while I do not need or want 
anything from a higher release.

So I upgraded the first computer to Release 6.3. The outcome was
that on this computer, where Release 5 was running just fine for
years, a Generic 6.3 kernel would just pagefault during boot. Nogo 
at all.

I searched for the problem, and found it to be the network card -
which is just a common standard de0 PCI card. 
Now, without network I cannot access the Internet, and if I do
not access the Internet, then I do not need to upgrade! This is 
some kind of catch22.

So I searched for the bug, I found something, I fixed it, and it
helped. 
I published a description of the problem and the fix via sendbug 
(kern/120915) - but apparently nobody seems to be interested in a
nonfunctional network on a so-called "production" release.

Actually, I do not know what else I would have to do besides finding
the bug, isolating the bug, creating a fix, using the fix and
publishing the fix?


So now I started to upgrade my second computer to Release 6.3.
And when booting the Generic kernel, it does just pagefault
quickly after booting is completed.

I isolated the problem - it is the network card. This one is a 
well-known standard ed0 ISA card that has worked fine for 15
years now, and it pagefaults as soon as the first data is 
transferred. I replaced the card with one of a different brand
(but also ed0), and the problem went away.

So, the mere statistical evidence is this: when upgrading from 
release 5.5 to 6.3, 100% of the computers that did work fine with 
5.5 do no longer run.

I suppose the next thing I should do is some kind of reality check, 
to adjust my understanding of the words "stable",
"production" and
"upgrade". :-/

But the more severe aspect of the matter is, if this is a trend that
will intensify with further upgrades, and if so, then what to do about
it.

"never change a running system" would be a good approach, if there 
were not the security issues. 
The other approach is to always buy new hardware. That is the Windows
approach, and I do not like it. When a Pentium-II/350 is only 10% 
loaded, then why should one get a new computer for the job?? It just
eats more power and creates ecohazard waste. :-(

rgds,
PMc

On March 22, 2008 01:01 pm Peter Much wrote:
> Both of them were running Release 5.5, and they were doing all that
> is needed, and I was perfectly happy with this.
>
> Now, as we know, security support for Release 5.5 will terminate
> during this spring, and as my computers are exposed to the Internet,
> this means that I MUST upgrade, even while I do not need or want
> anything from a higher release.
>
> So I upgraded the first computer to Release 6.3. The outcome was
A safer (recommended?) upgrade process when crossing major versions (ie 
5.x to 6.x) is to upgrade to the latest release of the "old" version, 
then to the .0 release of the "new" version, then to the latest
release
of the "new" version.

So from 5.x to 5.5, then from 5.5 to 6.0, then from 6.0 to 6.3.

The devs take great pains to make the transition from "latest X.x to
Y.0"
simple and mostly fool-proof, and the transition from "Y.x to Y.z"
simple
and mostly fool-proof.  But there are no guarantees when going from X.x 
to Y.z.

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash@gmail.com