The sysinstall's safe_realloc() failure

[Makoto Matsushita]

peter> Floppy via passive ftp.  I've done it numerous times in the
peter> past, is it not a good idea?  I specifically chose the
peter> snapshots server from the list.

Hmm, that's exactly I'm now trying to know why.  Some of guys told me
that this is happen if snapshots.jp.FreeBSD.org as a ftp installation
server.

***

The message you've seen showss that sysinstall try to realloc() with
size 0.  Actual messaage is by src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/misc.c:safe_realloc().
The size 0 comes from src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/dist.c:distExtractTarball().

In this function, sysinstall checks the size of each chunk from the
checksum file (*.inf).  This file is not broken, and it seems that
there is no problem about xfering this file.  But... sysinstall parses
this file decides that the chunk size is 0 -- that's the problem.

Note that 4-stable doesn NOT have this problem, since 4-stable sysinstall
have static buffer for chunks.  5-current sysinstall checks each
chunk's size, and realloc() memory for that.

I do want to know this problem depends on only ftp server or
sysinstall itself, but have very little luck...

Anyway thanks for informing your case.

-- -
Makoto `MAR' Matsushita