Apparent fxp regression in FreeBSD 8.4-RC3

[Glen Barber]

Speaking entirely on behalf of myself now...

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:11:39PM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> > I think this will likely be included in errata notes for the release.
> 
> I urge you to meet with others in Release Engineering and discuss this
> fully.  This is major enough that, once fixed, it warrants an immediate
> binary update (to the kernel + if_fxp.ko) pushed out via freebsd-update.
> 

It can be solved with a -pN update after 8.4-RELEASE is out.

> fxp(4) is a commonly-used driver; it isn't something rare/uncommon.
> 

Right.  So why do we have exactly 1 (now 2) reports of this?

We are already behind the release schedule.  There have been 4 "Hey,
the next release is available for testing, so please do so"
announcements.

At this stage, holding up this release for last-minute (not last-minute
code changes, either) reports will do nothing for the FreeBSD Project as
a whole but hold up the remaining releases scheduled for the remainder
of the year.

> Also remember at this stage we don't know if it's a specific PHY model
> or specific NIC model (or series) which triggers it.  For all we know it
> could affect everything that fxp(4) drives.
> 

Right.  Without this information, we simply cannot hold off the release
indefinitely.  I've asked the OP to do some very specific things, all
without yielding results, as well as replies from others.

> Please don't forget that FreeBSD has a very well-established history of
> having rock-solid Intel NIC support.  Sure, mistakes happen, we're
> human, bugs get introduced, but this does not bode well -- meaning I
> would expect Slashdot et al to pick up on this.
> 

This is not a last minute bug.  This is a last minute report, sadly.

Glen

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