System borked: loader stack overflow.

Andrew Thompson thompsa at FreeBSD.org
Sun Jan 18 12:18:15 PST 2009


On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 09:08:56PM +0100, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 02:19:23PM -0500, Andrew Lankford wrote:
> > Andrew Thompson wrote:
> ...
> > >Having the following in /boot/loader.conf triggers it for me,
> > >
> > > loader_conf_files="/boot/device.hints /boot/loader.conf"
> > >
> > >You may say thats its an invalid config line but the loader shouldnt
> > >blow up from it. Can this be fixed up somehow?
> 
> no, this cannot be "fixed" because it is the user misprogramming
> the system, such as providing the wrong path to the kernel
> or writing a loop in /etc/rc.conf or a billion other ways.

Yes, but you can copy /etc/defaults/rc.conf to /etc/rc.conf and things
still work.

> Setting loader_conf_files="x y z" is basically equivalent to
> writing "call a; call b; call c;" in a programming language,
> with the only difference that the action is done at the end of
> the current file.

Ok, then loader_conf_files needs to be marked as special and not to be
overridden from /boot/defaults/loader.conf like all the other options.

A better way would be to track included files and not reprocess them.

Also an entry in UPDATING that a config error that was once harmless now
renders the system unbootable (without intervention).


cheers,
Andrew


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