kernel panic when unmount removed usbdrive

[Torfinn Ingolfsen]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:06:57 +0100
Henrik Gulbrandsen <henrik at gulbra.net> wrote:

> You know, the good thing about thinking something is easy is that you
> get the nerve to actually start working on the problem. I agree that
> it is not a trivial fix. I pride myself on being able to fix almost
> any bug within a day. At least, that's what it says on my business
> cards, but in this case there were several underlying issues, so say
> one week of deep analysis and patching to reach the state where I
> couldn't reproduce any version of the problem. I'd call that "hard",
> not "very hard" :-)

My use of the phrase "very hard" here didn't reflect only on the
technical issues of the problem, but all the issues:
1. there are a limited (very limited?) number of developers with enough
insight to even try to fix this prtoblem
2. the problem has been around for so long that any "new" or "fresh"
developers will also hear that this problem is hard to fix, and thus
probably avoid it
3. seasoned FreeBSD users and developers know how to workaround; and
thus the problem remains "out of sight"
4. the few people who could fix this problem doesn't have enough free
time to meet and discuss how to best solve it

It is very good that you have done something with the problem in spite
of all this. Keep up the good work!

> There is a piece of potential wisdom that I've been toying with
> lately: You get the life you accept. Read that again and give it some
> thought! What you accept. Not the life you want, not even the life
> you deserve, but the life you accept, because that is where you will
> stop striving for something even better. In this case, I have no
> doubt that the very moment we decide that it is truly unacceptable
> for a FreeBSD kernel to panic in a common scenario like this, that is
> when we will start to see some really quick progress in this area.

I agree - you get the life you accept.
In my case, FreeBSD is just a very small part of my life (hey - it's
just an operating system for computers, and life is so much more than
computers to me), which means that the time I am willing to spend on
problems in FreeBSD has to be weighed against other activites.

That said - FreeBSD _is_ my favorite operating system.
-- 
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen