Kernel problems on 5.3.

[Jacob S]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 11:25:02 -0500
David Robillard <david.robillard at notarius.com> wrote:

> Hi Jacob,

Hello David,
 
> You should try to CVSup your FreeBSD machines to get the latest code.
> Read section A.5 of the FreeBSD Handbook. Here's the link:
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvsup.html
> 
> I can't say this will fix your current problem, but for sure it can
> only be good, at least from a security stand point.

Ok. I had been meaning to learn cvsup anyway. Your instructions for
setting it up are great - I was having trouble finding documentation for
that step.

> You can proceed to do so via ssh.
> 
> What you want to do is this:
> 
> a) Create the file /root/cvs-supfile which contains the following:
> 
> sudo vi /root/cvs-supfile
> 
<snip - cvsup-supfile>
> 
> c) Create the cvsup directory.
> 
> sudo mkdir -p /var/db/cvsup/sup
> 
> 
> d) Now copy the refuse file to your cvsup directory.
> 
> sudo cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/refuse /var/db/cvsup/sup
> 
> 
> e) Setup your environment. You should set this up in your
>    favorite shell's rc file. This here is for sh(1) and bash(1).
> 
> CVSROOT=freebsdanoncvs at anoncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs
> export CVSROOT
> 
> 
> f) Proceed with cvsup. Note, the first time you run things,
>    you will be prompted to accept the RSA signature of the
>    server you connect to.
> 
> sudo cvsup -g -L 2 /root/cvs-supfile
> 
> 
> g) When the download finishes, rebuild the world and the kernel.
>    Note, you have a custom built kernel, so you must change
>    KERNCONF=GENERIC to KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_CONFIG_FILE_NAME
> 
> cd /usr/src
> sudo make -j2 buildworld
> sudo make -j2 buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC
> sudo make installkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC
> sudo mergemaster -p
> sudo make installworld
> sudo mergemaster
> 
> 
> h) Finally, reboot the machine.
> 
> Once your machines come back online, run `uname -r` and you will
> notice that the current release level of the operating system has
> changed. For example, my servers have changed from "5.3-RELEASE" to
> "5.3-RELEASE-p5".

I have had contact with another FreeBSD user running 5.3 on Xeon
machines that make it look like the HyperThreading (SMP) support might
be suspect in the kernel. I hope to test this tomorrow, but had to
schedule the downtime with the client first.

Oh, and between the other user and reading /usr/src/Makefile I was able
to learn about mergemaster, which fixes another of my concerns related
to the upgrade.

Thanks again,
Jacob