cvs-src summary for 22/02/04

From: Mark Johnston <mjohnston_at_skyweb.ca>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:25:03 -0600
My apologies to those whose e-mails I haven't replied to this weekend -
hopefully I'll have a chance to sit down with my e-mail next week.  I've
had quite a busy weekend, which also explains the lateness of the
summary.  Without further ado:

FreeBSD cvs-src summary for 15/02/04 to 22/02/04
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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

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::

============
New features
============
PThreads barrier support added
------------------------------
Mike Makonnen (mtm) added support for PThreads barriers and barrier
attributes to the libthr threading library.  In threading terms, a barrier
is a way of synchronizing many threads together.  Each thread that
synchronizes with (calls) the barrier is suspended.  When enough threads
are suspended, the barrier lets them all run again at once.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402191351.i1JDprSG065022

GEOM disk concatenation support added
-------------------------------------
Pawel Jakub Dawidek (pjd) added support to GEOM for disk concatenation.
Disk concatenation allows multiple physical storage devices to be used
as though they were one big disk.  He also committed a utility called
gconcat, used to create, destroy, and label GEOM concatenated-disk
devices.

GEOM support: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402191519.i1JFJoYQ084836
gconcat: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402191602.i1JG29pe094944

New Sendmail version 8.12.11 merged to 4.x
------------------------------------------
Gregory Neil Shapiro (gshapiro) merged Sendmail 8.12.11 to FreeBSD 4.x.
This is the same update applied to -CURRENT `last week`_.  Please see the
`Sendmail 8.12.11 release notes`_ for details on the minor changes that
the new version involves.

.. _`last week`: http://excel.xl0.org/FreeBSD/15-02-04.html#id8
.. _`Sendmail 8.12.11 release notes`: http://www.sendmail.org/8.12.11.html

Syslog support added to nologin(8)
----------------------------------
Colin Percival (cperciva) committed an update to nologin, the program that
displays a message to accounts that are not allowed to log in, to have
it send a syslog message when a locked-out user tries to log in.  This
increaes the binary size by 100 kb, so he has added an option to disable
it.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402221003.i1MA3PW0024791

cleanworld target added to the system Makefile
----------------------------------------------
Garance A. Drosehn (gad) added a target to the system Makefile called
"cleanworld".  This makes the command "make cleanworld" in /usr/src that
removes all the files that would have been created by "make buildworld"
and "make buildkernel".

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402162018.i1GKIQK4029731

Basic large file support for ext2 filesystems
---------------------------------------------
Tim J. Robbins (tjr) added support for large files on ext2 filesystems.
The code works only on filesystems that are compatible with recent ext2
code, as well as needing a compatibility flag set.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402181408.i1IE8QaL004568

=================
Committer changes
=================
Alfred Perlstein (alfred) introduced Jim Rees (rees) as a new src
committer.  Jim will be working on the client and server for version 4 of
the NFS (Network File System) file-sharing system.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402170216.i1H2GuU4058858

Paul Saab (psaab) introduced Vinod Kashyap (vkashyap), a new src
committer, who will be working on the drivers for 3ware's ATA RAID
adapters.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402202335.i1KNZxrO075548

=================
Discussion topics
=================
Outputting line numbers when panicking, revisited
-------------------------------------------------
As mentioned in the `January 23rd summary`_, Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) had
made a commit that added filenames and line numbers to panic messages.
The discussion surrounding that change was revived late last week as Bruce
Evans (bde) pointed out that the discussion had been left open.  Nate
Lawson (njl) mentioned that he had already committed a patch by Ian Dowse
(iedowse) that causes backtraces to be properly logged.  Marcel Moolenaar
(marcel) suggested that KASSERT(), the macro used for assertions, could be
modified to print a file and line number.  John Baldwin (jhb) suggested
the MPASS() macro, which already outputs the line number, instead, and
some discussion followed about renaming MPASS() to ASSERT().

.. _`January 23rd summary`: http://excel.xl0.org/FreeBSD/23-01-04.html#id5

Bruce's original message: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040213035557.M24031
Nate's comment: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040217083910.M29569
John's MPASS suggestion: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402180839.09285.jhb

M_WAITOK memory allocation flag modified
----------------------------------------
Dag-Erling Smorgrav (des) committed code to the memory subsystem allowing
it to fail and return NULL when a request for memory with the M_WAITOK
flag could not be satisfied.  This started a discussion about whether
the change in the meaning of M_WAITOK was good.  The problem stems from
wanting the ability to request arbitrary amounts of memory in kernel code
without risking that the request will cause a panic.  There were numerous
requests to back out the change in favor of some other workaround to the
problem.  Maxime Henrion (mux) mentioned having written a patch that adds
that ability; some discussion followed over whether the functionality is
worthwhile.  Dag-Erling backed out the commit on Monday.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402161841.i1GIfwmv008267
Maxime's post: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040216210503.GC35475
Dag-Erling's backout: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402162136.i1GLaxWG053281

Properly removing vendor files from -CURRENT in CVS
---------------------------------------------------
Andrey Chernov (ache) removed some files related to GNU getopt from the
system.  Ollivier Robert pointed out that the commit took the files off
of the vendor CVS branch.  There was some discussion about how files on
the vendor branch should be removed when the need arises.  For the full
thread, which requires deep knowledge of the FreeBSD CVS management policy
(or at least more than I have) to understand, please use the link below.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402170343.i1H3hCot079054

Boot-time configuration with device.hints vs. loader.conf
---------------------------------------------------------
Wes Peters (wes) committed code to the ACPI manual page explaining the
difference between sysctl(8) variables and device.hints(5) tunables.  This
prompted discussion on the benefits of putting changes in loader.conf
instead of device.hints.  Neither file is automatically changed, but
device.hints can be updated with new kernel versions.  Nate Lawson (njl)
also mentioned that loader.conf is empty by default, making it easier to
read when troubleshooting.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402172038.i1HKcnKY035565
Nate's comment: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040217143034.B31176

Major modifications to device code
----------------------------------
Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) introduced significant upgrades to the system
device handling code.  The new code allows devices to be tracked much
more precisely than they used to be, making bugs easier to track down and
fix.  It also frees most devices from using pre-allocated device numbers.
The upgrade changes the API for drivers, so all third-party drivers will
need to be updated to match.  Poul-Henning has updated all of the system
drivers for the new API.

API change: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402212110.i1LLAtEX008732
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402212157.i1LLvQWp020145

===================
Important bug fixes
===================
IPv6 packet filter now properly enabled
---------------------------------------
Mike Makonnen (mtm) committed code to the startup scripts for the IPv6
version of ipfw, correcting a problem that caused the firewall not to be
properly enabled after the rules were loaded.  This closes `PR 61501`_,
submitted by Roderick van Domburg.

.. _`PR 61501`: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=61501

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402190653.i1J6rPlP057009

Coverity-reported bugs fixed
----------------------------
Ted Unangst of Coverity_ sent reports for a number of bugs that he had
found with Coverity's automatic bug-detection software.  The most serious
bug fixed was in the RAIDframe RAID driver, where far too little memory
was being allocated in some cases.  These fixes were committed over the
course of the week by Colin Percival (cperciva), Jim Rees (rees), and
Soeren Schmidt (sos).

Thanks to Colin Percival (cperciva) for filling me in on the Coverity
story.

.. _Coverity: http://www.coverity.com/

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402220103.i1M13coA076447

Jailed processes moving around corrected
----------------------------------------
Jacques Vidrine (nectar) applied a fix to the jail code to prevent jailed
processes from moving from one jail to another.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402192103.i1JL3KhF076615

===============
Other bug fixes
===============
Tim J. Robbins (tjr) modified the savecore(8) utility, which is used to
save system crash dumps, so that it would properly save dumps larger than
2 GB.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402201222.i1KCMqgJ004355

Bruce Evans (bde) committed a fix for a serious off-by-one error in the
DOS filesystem code.  This bug would have caused memory corruption under
specific conditions when using DOS filesystems.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402212247.i1LMlKJ5033386

Scott Long (scottl) fixed a recently-introduced panic in the aac driver
for Adaptec SCSI controllers.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200402210532.i1L5WfBi068177

Andrey A. Chernov (ache) updated many system tools to use the system
version of getopt_long(), which parses command-line options, instead of
their own versions or the GNU version.
Received on Sun Feb 22 2004 - 21:24:46 UTC

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