Latest 9.2-RELEASE-p5 update keeps wanting to install /boot/kernel/linker.hints

[Victor Sudakov]

andrew clarke wrote:
> On Thu 2014-05-01 11:28:16 UTC-0400, Paul Mather (freebsd-lists at gromit.dlib.vt.edu) wrote:
> 
> > I used freebsd-update to apply the latest security updates to bring 
> > several FreeBSD/amd64 systems to 9.2-RELEASE-p5.  Unfortunately, the 
> > subsequent "freebsd-update cron" run reported there were still updates 
> > available:
> > 
> > =====
> > [[...]]
> > 
> > The following files will be updated as part of updating to 9.2-RELEASE-p5:
> > /boot/kernel/linker.hints
> > =====

[dd]

> 
> A quick googling shows this is quite an old bug!
> 
> Short answer: It's annoying but you can safely ignore it.
> 
> Long answer: linker.hints is actually generated locally when
> freebsd-update runs "kldxref -R /boot/". The problem is then sometimes
> the local checksum doesn't match the freebsd-update server's remote
> checksum of linker.hints, because kldxref in 9.2-REL does not take
> into account that the order of a directory can be different between
> machines/filesystems.
> 
> A patch was submitted to 9-stable & 10-stable in Dec 2013:
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=182098

This problem is also relevant for 8.4-RELEASE-p9. 

Ignoring it is not convenient because while the problem is there,
freebsd-update generates an E-mail every time it is run. While it
should remain silent if there are no updates.


-- 
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
sip:sudakov at sibptus.tomsk.ru