cvs-src summary for December 28 - January 3

FreeBSD cvs-src summary for 2004-12-28 to 2005-01-03
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This is a regular weekly summary of FreeBSD's cutting-edge development.
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============
New Features
============
Initial support for extracting ISO images in libarchive
-------------------------------------------------------
Tim Kientzle (kientzle) committed preliminary support to libarchive[1]
(and thus bsdtar[2]) for extracting files from ISO images.  Tim notes that
numerous bugs still exist in the code, and it doesn't support some ISO
features, but he has been able to extract files from some test images.  He
welcomes tips from people familiar with the ISO9660 format.

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=libarchive&apropos=0&sektion=3&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format=html
[2] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=bsdtar&apropos=0&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format=html

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200501020521.j025LF68085390

FILE utility updated to 4.12
----------------------------
David E. O'Brien (obrien) upgraded file[1], which identifies the type of a
file by inspecting it, to version 4.12.  The new version replaces the old
4.10, adding some minor bugfixes and fixing some crashes.

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=file&apropos=0&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format=html

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412280431.iBS4Vmcj084717

Auto-disable of port randomizing code
-------------------------------------
Mike Silbersack (silby) modified the code that randomizes the TCP ports
used for making connections so that it will automatically revert to
old-style consecutive port use when many connections are being made
quickly.  This avoids problems with ports being reused too soon by the
random allocation code.  Mike thanked Igor Sysoev for showing that the
patch was needed and testing preliminary versions.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200501020150.j021ovpg071890

=================
Discussion Topics
=================
Extracting files from ISO images
--------------------------------
As mentioned above, Tim Kientzle (kientzle) added initial support to
libarchive for extracting files from ISO images.  This prompted discussion
on a few different topics.  There was a brief discussion about supporting
ISO9660 properly without seeking, as libarchive must, and other methods of
extracting files from CDs or ISO images were also mentioned.  There was
also a short thread about committing development code like this into the
main tree.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200501020521.j025LF68085390

=================
Committer Changes
=================
For the record, Tony Finch (fanf) and Peter Edwards (peadar) are well out
of mentorship.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412291552.iBTFqir0026021

===================
Important Bug Fixes
===================
4.x memory/file corruption bug fixed
------------------------------------
Julian Elischer (julian) committed a fix to the memory allocation code
in 4.x, eliminating a bug that could cause filesystem corruption as well
as "page not found in hash" panics.  This would most frequently appear
in systems with slow disk drivers, like twe[1], or subsystems that made
heavy use of the affected contigmalloc code.  The fix was obtained from
Matt Dillon via DragonFlyBSD[2], with credit to David Rhodus for his
persistence in tracking down the bug.

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=twe&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format=html
[2] http://www.dragonflybsd.org

Submitted by: DragonflyBSD

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412302224.iBUMOh6I048637

Many fixes to wireless networking code
--------------------------------------
Sam Leffler (sam) made many fixes to the 802.11a/b/g wireless networking
support code, as well as to the ath[1] driver for Atheros 802.11*
hardware.  There are dozens of bugfixes covering many areas, including
packet capturing, debugging, QoS Quality of Service, and WPA Wi-Fi
Protected Access.

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ath&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format=html


Many IPX fixes
--------------
Robert Watson (rwatson) made many commits to the IPX the layer 3 protocol
used by Novell Netware instead of IP subsystem, enhancing locking,
improving style, and fixing various bugs.


===============
Other Bug Fixes
===============
Julian Elischer (julian) fixed a bug in the USB2 support code that could
have caused memory corruption when the system aborted a USB transaction.
This work was done with advice from David Brownell.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412290121.iBT1LIow075852

Diomidis Spinellis (dds) fixed a memory leak in the system regular
expression library.

PR: 75656 (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=75656)

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412301427.iBUERvbL016896