Sorry for the delay this week. FreeBSD cvs-src summary for 25/10/04 to 01/11/04 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 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). If you would like to get the summary without subscribing to current_at_, please send mail to freebsd-cvs-summary-subscribe_at_lists.enderunix.org. Thanks to Omer Faruk Sen and EnderUNIX for hosting this list. For Lukasz Dudek and Szymon Roczniak's Polish translations of these summaries, which may lag the English ones slightly, please see http://mocart.pinco.pl/FreeBSD/. .. contents:: ============ New features ============ -I safety net option added to rm -------------------------------- Xin Li (delphij) added a new -I option to rm. rm -I will prompt for confirmation when removing directories recursively (rm -r) or removing more than 3 files, but not otherwise. It is intended to be similar to rm -i, which confirms every operation, but to be usable for power users who don't want to be prompted when removing individual files. This code was originally implemented by Matthew Dillon for DragonFlyBSD, then enhanced by various DragonFly contributors. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410280825.i9S8PVWc057933 OpenSSH 3.9p1 imported ---------------------- Dag-Erling Smorgrav (des) imported version 3.9p1 of OpenSSH, the SSH server and client suite. OpenSSH 3.9 adds session multiplexing, allowing a single ssh connection to carry multiple sessions, and many sftp improvements. Importantly, version 3.9 introduces stricter permission checks for the file ~/.ssh/config; if you have weak permissions on your config file, ssh will exit when run. The full `release announcement`_ with change listing is posted on the `OpenSSH site`_. .. _`release announcement`: http://www.openssh.com/txt/release-3.9 .. _`OpenSSH site`: http://www.openssh.com/ http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410281603.i9SG3ult085519 Multiple-mouse support improved ------------------------------- Mike Makonnen (mtm) committed some system script changes to improve the support for multiple mice. You can now specify the configuration for multiple mice in /etc/rc.conf by including the mouse device name in the option name. For instance, moused_ums0_enable, moused_ums0_flags, and moused_ums0_port apply to the USB mouse on ums0. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200411011805.iA1I5fCZ040914 Many filesystems moved to using GEOM directly --------------------------------------------- Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) converted many filesystems from the old DEVFS backing to GEOM backing. This means that the filesystem code deals with the GEOM disk layer to communicate with hardware, eliminating overhead. The UFS, MS-DOS, UDF, cd9660, ext2fs, HPFS, and NTFS drivers have all been converted. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410291015.i9TAFu8j057802 (others omitted) ALTQ support for the bge driver ------------------------------- Dag-Erling Smorgrav (des) committed support to the bge driver, for Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet chips, for the ALTQ packet shaping subsystem. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410302121.i9ULLAv1084524 =============== Notable changes =============== ULE scheduler marked broken --------------------------- Scott Long (scottl) marked the SCHED_ULE scheduler as broken in 5.3 and the RELENG_5 stable tree. If you have been testing 5.3 with ULE and having problems, please switch back to the old 4BSD scheduler and see whether the problem continues. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410260218.i9Q2I8Ip058346 Debug sysctls are now optional ------------------------------ Robert Watson (rwatson) changed the debug sysctl tree (all sysctls starting with "debug") so that it is available only when the kernel option SYSCTL_DEBUG is set. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410271926.i9RJQ15p010564 ================= Discussion topics ================= Complying with threading standards ---------------------------------- Brian Feldman (green) changed the threading code so that a locking function would return a different error code, "as all software packages expect and seems to be most correct according to the slightly-ambiguous standards." He also posted a followup, saying, "Software such as mozilla projects (using NSPR) and Java have been broken in various ways by this [bug]. We need to try to be more compatible with the most popular interpretation of the standards[.]" Alfred Perlstein (alfred) replied, "Good catch... it could have just been an oversight though. :) We need a 'configure' like regression suite for pthreads." Brian noted, "Actually, I think POSIX has a whole bunch of regression tests! I wonder if anyone could ever convince them to make them free for BSD operating systems..." Scott Long (scottl) replied to Brian's earlier comment about broken software, saying, "Please define 'broken'? There are many test suites available for pthreads. How does this affect those test suites, and have you _directly_ talked with those who run the tests suites?" Brian answered, "It causes them to _FAIL_. [ . . . ] We break the assertions that software developers use when writing to the pthreads API [ . . . ]. The POSIX-provided-for-free [test suite] does not have coverage of error return values from what I can see, and the Linux pthreads ones also don't test this because as far as they are concerned, it's a code invariant[. . .] The FreeBSD one has similar issues (lack of coverage ones) but additionally is exceedingly moldy[.]" Daniel Eischen (deischen) replied, "If you're talking about the FreeBSD mutex test (libpthread/test/mutex_d.c), that should work." Daniel also responded to Brian's initial commit, saying, "The current behavior was deemed correct especially since default mutexes are error check mutexes. The rationale is that it provides a way for a thread to tell if it owns the mutex if EDEADLK is returned." Brian asked, "What is your rationale for choosing a very, very loose interpretation that deliberately acts entirely differently from essentially every other implementation[?] [ . . . ] After further review, I can't possibly see how the behavior you chose to use is allowed by a reasonable interpretation of the standard." Daniel answered, "We use error check mutexes by default, which is allowed by the spec, because they come at no cost and it is good to detech buggy use of mutexes. [ . . . ]." He answered the "reasonable interpretation" question, "Because pthread_mutex_trylock() is defined in terms of pthread_mutex_lock() and pthread_mutex_lock() returns EDEADLK when a thread tries to recursively lock an error checking mutex." Dag-Erling Smorgrav (des) replied, "They come at considerable cost. They make it impossible to use the Boehm garbage collector in threaded programs, for instance [ . . . ]. There is probably a significant performance penalty as well." Daniel answered, "No, they all call malloc() since all mutexes are currently pointers to thingies." Daniel also replied to his earlier post about the current behavior being deemed correct, saying, "I have response from Dave Butenhof over at the Austin Group mailing list, and EBUSY should be returned even for error check mutexes. He acknolwedged the spec was not clear and thought they had cleaned it up in that regard. So this [Brian's commit] is the correct fix :-)" http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410310503.i9V53ofj011896 =============== Other bug fixes =============== Bruce M. Simpson (bms) fixed a system panic that could be caused by using the Zebra routing daemon with "tun" tunnel interfaces. This closes `PR 42030`_. The fix was submitted by Iasen Kostov. .. _`PR 42030`: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=42030 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410260331.i9Q3Vxbv060994 Bruce M. Simpson (bms) committed a workaround to a panic in the vr driver for Via Rhine Ethernet chips. This closes `PR 62889`_. .. _`PR 62889`: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=62889 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410261949.i9QJnkKQ022299 Robert Watson (rwatson) fixed a bug in the TCP SACK (selective acknowledgement) code that could result in the TCP stack failing under high load. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200410301202.i9UC2oTc047854Received on Tue Nov 02 2004 - 21:40:40 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Wed May 19 2021 - 11:38:20 UTC