From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 18 22:24:41 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A1651065678 for ; Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:24:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from luigi@onelab2.iet.unipi.it) Received: from onelab2.iet.unipi.it (onelab2.iet.unipi.it [131.114.9.129]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 60F3C8FC16 for ; Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:24:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from luigi@onelab2.iet.unipi.it) Received: by onelab2.iet.unipi.it (Postfix, from userid 275) id 98AF97309E; Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:29:58 +0100 (CET) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:29:58 +0100 From: Luigi Rizzo To: stable@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20090118222958.GA32414@onelab2.iet.unipi.it> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Cc: re@freebsd.org Subject: RFC: side effects of fixing loader_conf_files handling X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:24:42 -0000 hi, in some recent commits to HEAD and stable/7 i fixed the handling of loader_conf_files so that it behaves as always intended and documented in loader.conf(5): ... loader_conf_files Defines additional configuration files to be processed right after the present file. Previously, the check for new assignments was incorrect, and it happened to ignored assignments which did not result in a buffer reallocation by the Forth interpreter (essentially, any string not longer than the current one was ignored). An annoying side effect of the fix is that now people who (mistakenly) copied /boot/defaults/loader.conf into /boot/loader.conf (and possibly edit it), now create a loop because their /boot/loader.conf now contains loader_conf_files="/boot/device.hints /boot/loader.conf /boot/loader.conf.local" which is not just a pure assignments. Never mind the fact nobody ever recommended to copy the file and then modify the copy, there seem to be several people who do this (and do the same for /etc/defaults/rc.conf). I think we should remove the use of loader_conf_files=... from /boot/defaults/loader.conf, partly to prevent this kind of bugs, and partly because it is nice to have only "pure assigments" in this file. If there are no objections, i will look at how to do it. Probably this requires putting the initial list of files somewhere else, probably in /boot/loader.rc after the include /boot/loader.4th statement. Comments ? cheers luigi