kernel version changes release version. (was Re: How to change kernel version tag?)

[Spencer PriceNash]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 06:22:42PM +0800, Yuan, Jue wrote:

> Hi all.
> 
> Could I change the kernel version tag manually? say, I have a kernel which is 
> 7.0-CUREENT, but for some reasons I wanna it be something like 6.1-RELEASE, 
> while the kernel itself does't change from 7.0-CURRENT to 6.1-RELEASE. All I 
> want is the change of tag. For example, if this works, then when I 
> type "uname -a" in console, I would get "6.1-RELEASE ..." instead 
> of "7.0-CURRENT ...".
> 
> I guess some config files in src/sys/ could take care of this. But I cannot 
> find it out. Anybody knows how to get this job done?
> 
> Any ideas are really appreciated. :-)

That seems an odd thing to do, but as it turns out, I somehow managed
to do it.

On Aug22, my old box had 5.3-RELEASE with a custom kernel.  Here's
something from a script that does backups every night, with the
date as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS starting every line (hostname changed to
avoid embarassment):

20060722234517:FreeBSD oldbox 5.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #0: Sat Nov 27 01:53:23 CST 2004     root at oldbox:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SPENCER1  i386

On Aug23 I upgraded to 5.4 (tried 6.1, but the old box hung repeatedly
after any fsck):

20060723234514:FreeBSD oldbox 5.4-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE #0: Sun May  8 10:21:06 UTC 2005     root at harlow.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

I installed a custom kernel on Aug 29.  The release version changed.
Here's what the old box says it is now:

20060729234515:FreeBSD oldbox 5.3-RELEASE-p31 FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p31 #0: Sat Jul 29 11:33:15 CDT 2006     root at oldbox:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/kernel.2006072910  i386

I have no idea what I did to cause the change.

Anyone have any idea what happened?  I'm not so sure this is a great
thing.  It hasn't seemed to bother anything.  cvsup/portupgrade
didn't seem to mind.  Neither did portsnap/portmanager.

Haven't tried booting with the previous kernel to see what happens,
as the box needs to stay up for a while.
-- 
Spencer PriceNash  spencer at io.com    many other addresses
http://www.io.com/~spencer           many other sites