cvs-src summary for 08/02/04

Sorry to send this out so late - I hope everyone's weekend has been as
relaxing and pleasant as mine.  As always, please let me know if you have
any comments or suggestions.

Also, I have to apologize that last week's summary wasn't posted on the
Web site when I sent out the notice, and in fact wasn't there for a couple
of days after that.  I forgot to upload it.  All of the summaries to date,
including this one, are now at http://www.xl0.org/FreeBSD/ in text and
HTML format.

Mark

FreeBSD cvs-src summary for 01/02/04 to 08/02/04
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is a regular weekly summary of FreeBSD's cutting-edge development.
It is intended to help the FreeBSD community keep up with the fast-paced
work going on in FreeBSD-CURRENT by distilling the deluge of data from
the CVS mailing list into a (hopefully) easy-to-read newsletter.  This
newsletter is marked up in reStructuredText_, so any odd punctuation that
you see is likely intended for the reST parser.

.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html

The mailing list archive is still reported to be down, but the links seem
to be working anyway.  YMMV, but check http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/ for
more information.

The format of this summary is based on Brett Cannon's python-dev
summaries, but it is subject to change.

You can get old summaries, and an HTML version of this one, at
http://www.xl0.org/FreeBSD/ . Please send any comments to Mark Johnston
(mark at xl0.org).

.. contents::

=================
Committer changes
=================
Two committers were added this week.  Scott Long (scottl) introduced Pawel
Jakub Dawidek (pjd), who will be working on GEOM and RAID.  Scott will
be Pawel's mentor.  Joerg Wunsch (joerg) introduced Lukas Ertl (le), who
will also initially be working on Vinum and its integration with GEOM.
Greg Lehey (grog) will be Lukas's official mentor, but because of the time
difference between the two, Joerg will be a co-mentor.

pjd's introduction: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402020905.i1295w5X080401
le's introduction: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402021905.i12J57UU030079

=================
Discussion topics
=================
Automatic high-temperature shutdown
-----------------------------------
Nate Lawson (njl) applied a minor patch to the ACPI code to prevent
false positives in the high-temperature shutdown routine, prompting some
general discussion of the feature.  M. Warner Losh (imp) mentioned that
a high-temperature shutdown would have saved his `melted Casio FIVA`_;
sadly, the feature wasn't here a year ago when it overheated.  There was
some discussion about other high-temperature-emergency measures, like
dropping to single-user mode or spinning down disks.  Nate explained that,
once cpufreq (code for controlling the speed of the system's processor)
is done, it will be used to slow down the CPU before the temperature gets
critical.

.. _`melted Casio FIVA`: http://people.freebsd.org/~imp/fiva-meltdown.jpg

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402021803.i12I3ZJW016336

Debugging support for libpthread
--------------------------------
David Xu (davidxu) added a debugger-independent library, libpthread_dbg,
that can be used to read and write libpthread's data structures.  Marcel
Moolenaar (marcel) suggested that the library be named libthread_db,
for consistency.  David argued that, since the library will support
only libpthread, it should use libpthread in the name.  Daniel Eischen
(deischen) offered to add abstraction to allow the library to support all
the threading libraries.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402040501.i1451Gir058159

CVS commit messages mistagged
-----------------------------
Many people contributed to a discussion about a problem that has been
cropping up with CVS commit mail lately, where the committer's userid
in the message is replaced with a different one.  Ken Smith stated that
the problem is being actively worked on.  Numerous people looked over
the code, and David Malone (dwmalone) noted that he has been noticing
getlogin(2) returning the wrong thing under -STABLE.  For now, the problem
remains at large.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402030932.i139WBpQ054113

================
Featured changes
================
Security hole in shmat(2) patched
---------------------------------
Jacques Vidrine (nectar) applied a security fix for a bug in shmat(2),
which is used to allocate SysV shared memory, as reported in
`FreeBSD-SA-04:02.shmat`_.  Jacques also patched the security branches for
5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 4.7, 4.8, and 4.9.  Please see `the advisory`_ for more
information.  This bug was originally reported by Joost Pol.

.. _`FreeBSD-SA-04:02.shmat`: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-04:02.shmat.asc
.. _`the advisory`: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-04:02.shmat.asc

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402051800.i15I0ZOx085923

Security enhancements in mount
------------------------------
Pawel Jakub Dawidek (pjd) made some important commits to the filesystem
mounting code.  Before his changes, root, from inside a jail, could
unmount any file system, and users inside jails could mount a file system
when the sysctl vfs.usermount was set to 1.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402021902.i12J25GL028606

libmap merged from -CURRENT
---------------------------
Max Khon (fjoe) committed libmap to -STABLE. libmap is a function in the
dynamic linker that allows programs loading libraries at runtime to be
redirected to other libraries on the fly.  The most common use of libmap,
in -CURRENT, is to manipulate the threading library that an application
loads; for instance, if a program tries to load libpthread.so, it can be
made to load libc_r.so instead.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402032104.i13L4GAf030014

Network interface renaming support added
----------------------------------------
Brooks Davis (brooks) committed code to the kernel and to ifconfig that
allows network interfaces to be renamed on the fly.  Network interfaces
can now be renamed with ifconfig name, like:

ifconfig xl0 name wired

If you use this feature, watch out for programs that break when their
interface is renamed and programs that assume that the interface name is
short.  Problems should be reported to Brooks and the net_at_ list.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402040254.i142sPMc014724

Hangs in getblk/vinvalb fixed in aac driver
-------------------------------------------
Scott Long (scottl) committed fixes to the aac (Adaptec AdvancedRAID)
driver over the course of the week, diagnosing and eventually fixing a
problem that was causing lost commands and system hangs.  As of Saturday,
he reports that it is now "safe to go back into the aac waters."

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402071030.i17AUN8a039905

=============
Other changes
=============
Peter Grehan made many commits to the PowerPC code, bringing in some
enhancements from NetBSD as well as some of his own work.
(many)

Ruslan Ermilov (ru) made many cleanups to Makefiles all over the system,
correcting style problems and fixing inconsistencies and redundancies.
(many)

Matt Jacob (mjacob) MFC'ed many bugfixes and minor corrections in the isp
driver for QLogic SCSI and Fibre Channel adapters.  He also applied fixes
in -CURRENT for a number of issues and brought in some cleanup work he had
been working on.
(many)

Justin T. Gibbs (gibbs) committed many enhancements and bugfixes to the
aic7xxx driver, for Adaptec AIC-7000 series RAID controllers.
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402041638.i14GccXu087812

Bill Paul (wpaul) continues to work on the NDISulator, AKA Project Evil,
at a terrific pace.  This week, he added support for the Centrino chipset
as supplied by Asus and the AMD Am1771/1772 chipsets.
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402030739.i137dNCs021236
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402070644.i176iDqn083119

John Baldwin (jhb) added some cleaned-up code, originally submitted by
Mike Makonnen (mtm), that enables locking for the per-process resource
limits structure.  Please see the commit message for a detailed list of
the many changes.
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402042152.i14Lqw7l073871

Mike Makonnen (mtm) committed a patch submitted by Juergen Unger to
support starting and stopping jails individually.
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402021325.i12DPSHU045860

Yar Tikhiy (yar) fixed a bug in ftpd that could have caused some FTP
clients, including Mozilla, to think that a directory was actually a file.
The fix was submitted by Bob Finch.
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402071411.i17EBcbj097460