Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 11:53:49 -0800 (PST) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.org, nate@yogotech.com Subject: Re: Turning on debugging in GENERIC Message-ID: <XFMail.001117115349.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <200011171924.MAA28949@usr08.primenet.com>
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Whew, and people think bikeshed wars are bad... To clarify at least one thing, the reason that I personally would like to have INVARIANTS and a few other options in the kernel are due to the fact that the new SMP code is not entirely stable, and can give some rather cryptic crashes and behaviors that are symptoms of other harder to find problems. Enabling extra sanity checks results in many of these root problems being found easier as a bug is spotted sooner before it heads off into the weeds and breaks something else. A panic telling you that you that chooseproc() returned NULL and you are trying to schedule the NULL proces is much more helpful than getting a panic later on after you have executed some unknown amount of random code before you get a trap 12 off in lala land. Now, as for snapshots, we do have a snapshot server (current.FreeBSD.org) that keeps roughly the last 3 months of snapshots. Boot floppies don't have room for all the debugging info, so boot floppy kernels won't have the extra debugging, however the kernel that boots after the system is installed will. It is also a form of motivation for existing current users to add these options to their kernels. Now, this project isn't perfect, and its users aren't perfect. This may be a band-aid, but it will have to do until someone implements a better solution. Note "implements", not "suggests and then wanders off due to time constraints or whatever". Also note that conning^Wpersuading someone to implement a suggestion you may make qualifies as "implements" in this case. </soapbox> -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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