Kernel Application Binary Interface (kABI) support in FreeBSD

[Julian Elischer]

On 7/23/15 6:06 PM, Venkat Duvvuru wrote:
> I will debug this crash.
> At this point, my concern is not about debugging this particular 
> issue but whether to commit to our customers or not about the binary 
> compatibility of FreeBSD X.0 drivers with all FreeBSD X.Y OS versions.
> I would like to stay safe and tell the customers to build the 
> drivers on their respective revisions unless you folks think that 
> the binary compatibility is maintained very strictly and this is one 
> of those rare bugs.
this is supposed to be possible but whether it actually is depends to 
some extent on whether the code in  question is considered likely to 
be directly callable by a third party module. Most interfaces that are 
likely to be called from network and storage drivers willb e very 
stable, as will scheduler interfaces and things like task queues and 
thread creation. the more esoteric the more likely that an 
incompatibility can be committed and not caught.

>
> Please let me know.

well, what are you doing?

>
> Thanks,
> Venkat.
>
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 8:33 PM, Julian Elischer <julian at freebsd.org 
> <mailto:julian at freebsd.org>> wrote:
>
>     On 7/22/15 2:56 PM, Venkat Duvvuru wrote:
>>     I have this setup where FreeBSD 9.0 OCE driver is loaded on
>>     FreeBSD 9.3. The OCE module loads just fine but when the
>>     interface is brought up, the system crashes. This happens
>>     everytime I bring the interface up.
>>     The backtraces are attached with this email.
>>     However, if I build the same driver on 9.3, everything works
>>     just fine.
>>
>     then that is a bug.
>     Unfortunately I'm not your man for helping you find it at the
>     moment.
>     Do you now how to run a kernel under GDB?
>     (either in a VM or with serial console (or firewire if you have
>     it))
>     There is a handbook section on doing this.
>     You might look at trying to see what actually goes wrong with
>     the help of GDB.
>
>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>