For those updating to FreeBSD-5.2-R

[Snugglebear]

Please read the instructions in src/UPDATING before upgrading to FreeBSD-5.2-R from a prior release. I'm seeing lots of people jump in without doing so and getting kicked in the head by installworld failures. If you try installworld without the reboot after installkernel, installworld will fail. Good luck with recovering the system from then on, commands like ls will cause core dumps. If you reboot you may be able to salvage your installation by copying the 5.2-R files from the object directory by hand. However, the easiest thing to do is avoid this altogether.

20031112:
The statfs structure has been updated with 64-bit fields to allow accurate reporting of multi-terabyte filesystem sizes. You should build world, then build and boot the new kernel BEFORE doing a `installworld' as the new kernel will know about binaries using the old statfs structure, but an old kernel will not know about the new system calls that support the new statfs structure.

Note that the backwards compatibility is only present when the kernel is configured with the COMPAT_FREEBSD4 option. Since even /bin/sh will not run with a new kernel without said option you're pretty much dead in the water without it. Make sure you have COMPAT_FREEBSD4!

Running an old kernel after a `make world' will cause programs such as `df' that do a statfs system call to fail with a bad system call. Marco Wertejuk <[email protected]> also reports that cfsd (ports/security/cfs) needs to be recompiled after these changes are installed.

***DANGER***
DO NOT make installworld after the buildworld w/o building and installing a new kernel FIRST. You will be unable to build a new kernel otherwise on a system with new binaries and an old kernel.

 

[[H]EMI_426]

Yeah, we've seen several cases of this in #FreeBSD on irc.freenode.net so far. We generally just club people about the head and shoulders with /usr/src/UPDATING and tell them to follow the established procedures.

Of course, stuff like this is to be expected until 5 has a -STABLE branch.

 

[Snugglebear]

Even once we get to -STABLE people still won't read the instructions. The mailings lists are chock full of this stuff. What's even more fun are all those who still send me email regarding data and array recovery after I left the hardware lists 6 months ago.