Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 14:02:42 -0800 (PST) From: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> To: Ken Smith <kensmith@cse.Buffalo.EDU> Cc: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 64btt cvsup? Message-ID: <XFMail.20040226140242.jdp@polstra.com> In-Reply-To: <20040226204702.GA8602@electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU>
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On 26-Feb-2004 Ken Smith wrote: > On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 12:20:33PM -0800, John Polstra wrote: >> All of a sudden, without any warning, the time() call is likely to >> start scribbling a 0 into either "a" or "b" -- or, worse yet, into >> half of the return address or frame pointer. Who knows what the >> symptoms of that will be? Will they be deterministic? Will they >> cause ugly security vulnerabilities? Whee! > > I think this is why we might be able to get away with not providing > the compatibility stuff - this part isn't quite true. Users can't > do a normal upgrade path (cvsup to -current, make buildworld/etc) > and get to a 64-bit time_t system. If you try to do an upgrade through > the normal path you break your machine at that point. To make it to > a 64-bit time_t system without breaking your system you need to follow > Garance's instructions and use his tools to do the upgrade. So there > kinda is a warning. OK, that's better than I thought. But what about old executables such as installed ports? Remember, this thread got started because some people thought old CVSup binaries worked, and some people thought they didn't. (We still don't know.) What happens to somebody who upgrades to a 64-bit time_t system and then installs a binary package that was built back in the 32-bit time_t days? Lots of things can go wrong here. John
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