5.2.1-RC issues: good and bad

[Scott Long]

Robin Schoonover wrote:
> APIC didn't like me in 5.2, and it still doesn't like me in 5.2.1 (vr0
> complains of watchdog timeout and fails to work) I've turned it off in the
> bios, so freebsd doesn't get to use that.  (Which is okay, I guess?)
> 

Does the APIC work any better if you move forward to 5.2-CURRENT?  There
is at least one APIC fix in HEAD that isn't in RELENG_5_2, but I'm not
sure how safe it is to backport.

> Fortunately, X works again in 5.2.1.  With 5.2, nv AND nvidia driver were
> having trouble giving me a resolution higher than 640x480.  (I haven't
> heard/seen any changes that would have fixed this, but somehow it works
> again...)
> 
> Two things are giving me i386_set_ldt warnings:
>  o nvidia's drivers (XFree86)

This actually comes from the nvidia GL library, not the driver.  And no,
it's not going to go away until FreeBSD and nVidia come to a compromise
on how to do thread local storage.  It's only a problem if you use
libthr or libkse/libpthread right now, and neither are enabled by
default in 5.2.1

>  o wine (completely broken until portupgrade)
> I portupgraded wine, and I got no more warnings for that (yes, I cheated
> and installed it even with the broken plist...).  I have a smallish
> question: is the i386_set_ldt warning because of switch to libkse as the
> default threads library?  (see next paragraph for my chatter about that)

A fix went into wine to address this problem.  The issue here is much
simpler than the nv library one.

> 
> (It appears to me that this warning was added ahead of the anticipated
> switch over, but does not appear to be switched over in 5.2.1-RC.  I am
> getting this from the fact that UPDATING does not mention it in
> 5.2.1-RC, and nvidia drivers are still working fine).
> 
> I had a few other problems, but they weren't really FreeBSD specific
> problems (things like bios's boot virus checker, and my .blackboxrc file
> reset).  Bonus points for 5.2.1, since 5.2.1-RC has definately been
> smoother than 5.2R was for me.
> 

Thanks!

Scott