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Date:      Thu, 5 Jun 2008 19:10:19 +0200
From:      Pieter de Goeje <pieter@degoeje.nl>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Paul Schmehl <pschmehl_lists_nada@tx.rr.com>
Subject:   Re: challenge: end of life for 6.2 is premature with buggy 6.3
Message-ID:  <200806051910.20319.pieter@degoeje.nl>
In-Reply-To: <CE0D857CF3C54017B29052F0@utd65257.utdallas.edu>
References:  <9B7FE91B-9C2E-4732-866C-930AC6022A40@netconsonance.com> <200806051023.56065.jhb@freebsd.org> <CE0D857CF3C54017B29052F0@utd65257.utdallas.edu>

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On Thursday 05 June 2008, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> --On Thursday, June 05, 2008 10:23:55 -0400 John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
>
> wrote:
> > FWIW, at Y! 6.3 is more stable than 6.2 (I had a list of about 10 patches
> > for known deadlocks and kernel panics that were errata candidates for 6.2
> > that never made it into RELENG_6_2 but all of them are in 6.3).  We also
> > have many machines with bge(4) and from our perspective 6.3 has less
> > issues with bge0 devices than 6.2.
>
> I'm glad to hear that.  I have a server that uses bce, and it was
> completely non-functional until I hunted down some beta code that made it
> usable.  I'd like to upgrade, but this is a critical server with no
> redundancy (and it's a hobby site with no money to pay for expensive
> support), and I'm not about to upgrade unless I know for certain the
> problems won't reoccur, because I have to upgrade remotely and pay money if
> the system goes down.
>
> The problems with that driver were bad enough when the server was being
> configured in my study.  (The system would lock up, and only a hard reboot
> would restore networking.)  It would be hell trying to troubleshoot
> problems if I had to drive the 45 miles to the hosting site and spend a
> night there trying to get the server back up, then go to work the next day.
>
> # uname -a
> FreeBSD www.stovebolt.com 6.1-RELEASE-p10 FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p10 #2: Mon
> Oct 16 15:38:02 CDT 2006    
> root@www.stovebolt.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
>
> # grep bce /var/run/dmesg.boot
> bce0: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B1), v0.9.6> mem
> 0xf4000000-0xf5ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci9
> bce0: ASIC ID 0x57081010; Revision (B1); PCI-X 64-bit 133MHz
> miibus0: <MII bus> on bce0
> bce0: Ethernet address: 00:13:72:fb:2a:ad
> bce1: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B1), v0.9.6> mem
> 0xf8000000-0xf9ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci5
> bce1: ASIC ID 0x57081010; Revision (B1); PCI-X 64-bit 133MHz
> miibus1: <MII bus> on bce1
> bce1: Ethernet address: 00:13:72:fb:2a:ab
>
> # grep bce0 /var/log/messages
> May  2 09:10:31 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to DOWN
> May  2 09:10:39 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to UP
> May 25 07:49:49 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to DOWN
> May 25 07:50:31 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to UP
> May 26 21:28:36 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to DOWN
> May 26 21:28:40 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to UP
> May 27 13:13:21 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to DOWN
> May 27 13:13:31 www kernel: bce0: link state changed to UP
>
> It's been like that since the server was installed.
>
> So, if I upgrade to 6.3 or 7.0, am I still going to experience these
> problems? Is the server going to stop working entirely?  How can I know
> that for sure before starting an upgrade?
> [...]

There's a really easy way to test this. Build & install a new kernel, but keep 
the old kernel around (by default it's in /boot/kernel.old). If the problem 
is gone, do the upgrade as usual. If it's still there, you know upgrading 
won't fix it and you don't waste time; simply rename kernel.old to kernel. 
This even works with 7.0 provided that you leave COMPAT_FREEBSD6 in the 
kernel configuration file.

-- 
Pieter de Goeje




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