Re: HEADSUP: Commits Planned for 64-bit time_t on sparc64

At 9:58 PM -0500 2/22/04, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
>
>All of these changes will cause zero changes for people who are
>running on other hardware platforms.  Only sparc64 users have to lay
>awake in terror of what this change might do to them.  I should note
>that it *has* been working fine for me...  :-)   Also, about a dozen
>other sparc64 users have used these files to make a successful
>transition, with very few problems reported.

As I write this, it is known there is some problem with dhclient
in the base system.  It seems that people who need dhcp can get
around that problem by using the isc-dhcp3-client  port, but I
would hope we could get the base-system version fixed before
March 3rd.

It is quite possible there are other bugs lurking.  Please note
that I am making absolutely no promise to track down and solve
every problem might be triggered by this move to 64-bTT.

Ken Smith is also helping out with some other background-work which
will help users making this change.  I will also probably try to
add a check in the makefiles to prevent "foot-shooting", based on
an example that Marcel wrote up.  The idea is warn people if they
mistakenly go to install a 32-bTT system over the top of a system
which is already running 64-bTT.

>...  So if we can not make this change by
>March 15th (at the latest), then I think we will have to put
>it off until 6.0.

Obviously I would prefer if we did not put it off, but I also
realize that we had originally said we would wanted to be at
this point ("ready to make the change") by mid-January, so we
are running a bit late in the schedule.

>In fact, if I had a fix for the dhclient issue I would
>prefer to move both of the planned commits up by a week.

As to the problem I was referring to here.  The base-system dhclient
seems to *sometimes* work for *some* sparc64 users who have made the
transition, but it has problems for other users.  I know it worked
for me on a few tests, but I don't usually use it.  Now that I am
trying to use it, it seems to never work on my sparc...  (but the
version from ports seems to work)

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad_at_gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad_at_freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih_at_rpi.edu