Upgrading 5.1 to latest -> crash upon starting X

[Lowell Gilbert]

Ewald Jenisch <a at jenisch.at> writes:

> Seems like I'm running into a problem upgrading my 5.1 machine to the
> latest level:

If you're going to run -CURRENT, you really do have to follow the
-CURRENT mailing list.   
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html

> The symptoms: When I boot the new kernel everything runs straight up
> to the moment when I start X-Windows. When starting X as a normal user
> I end up with a "db"-prompt (debugger?); when starting X as root the
> screen goes blank and after some seconds the box reboots.

Yep, sounds pretty serious.

> As far as building & installing is concerned I did everything as per
> chapter 21 of "the handbook", including installing binaries (userland)
> in single-user mode, running mergemaster etc.etc.

No, you are supposed do the installworld under the *new* kernel, so
that if the kernel fails to boot, you don't end up with the new
binaries unless the matching kernel works as well.

> BTW, when booting the old kernel (kernel.old) everything is fine again
> -
> so assume the problem is with the kernel itself.

Right.

> Has anybody else seen this? What can I do against it?

I don't think I've seen anything like this on the -CURRENT list, so it
doesn't seem to be a general problem.  cvsup your sources again, and
do another round of updates.  Just make sure you save the working
kernel somewhere safe (kernel.old will be overwritten next time you do
an installkernel).

make buildworld
make buildkernel
make installkernel
shutdown -r now
and *then* do the make installworld.

And subscribe to freebsd-current at freebsd.org.