FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE Errata

1 Introduction

This errata document contains “late-breaking news” about FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE. Before installing this version, it is important to consult this document to learn about any post-release discoveries or problems that may already have been found and fixed.

Any version of this errata document actually distributed with the release (for example, on a CDROM distribution) will be out of date by definition, but other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be consulted as the “current errata” for this release. These other copies of the errata are located at http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/, plus any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this location.

Source and binary snapshots of FreeBSD 6-STABLE also contain up-to-date copies of this document (as of the time of the snapshot).

For a list of all FreeBSD CERT security advisories, see http://www.FreeBSD.org/security/ or ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/.

2 Update Information

No news.

3 Security Advisories

The following security advisories pertain to FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE. For more information, consult the individual advisories available from http://security.FreeBSD.org/.

4 Known Problems and Solutions

(2006/05/10) The errata file distributed with FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE mistakenly contained the errata applicable to FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE.

(2006/05/10) The release notes for FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE gave the wrong name for the KDE port in the item documenting the KDE upgrade. The correct name is x11/kde3.

(2006/05/10) The release notes for FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE should have mentioned changes that enable the second core of dual-core i386 and amd64 CPUs by default when running an SMP kernel.

(2006/05/13) A change in the ata(4) driver in FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE modified a software interface visible from userland programs. Programs that use the IOCATAREQUEST ioctl(2) interface will need to be recompiled. Typically, these programs communicate directly with ATA and ATAPI drives, such as CDROM burning or ripping tools, or monitoring utilities. One known example is smartd from the sysutils/smartmontools port.

(2006/05/27, updated 2006/06/01) On FreeBSD/alpha, sysinstall(8) sometimes does not allow a disk to be labeled. The disk is presented in sysinstall(8) but actions like Auto do not result in a disklabel being presented. One workaround is to boot the install CD, then select Fixit. From the Fixit# prompt, run disklabel(8) manually. For example: disklabel -rw da1 auto ensures a valid disklabel is written onto da1. Reboot from the install media. sysinstall(8) will now detect a valid disklabel on the disk and allow it to be partitioned to your preference.

(2006/05/27) FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE includes a change to some definitions in src/sys/net/if_media.h (revision 1.30.2.1). This could break source-level compatibility with externally-maintained 10Gb Ethernet network drivers written for FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE. This change should have been documented in the release notes.

(2006/06/01, updated 2006/07/07) A bug in the rc.d/jail startup script could cause various problems for users attempting to configure jail(2) environments at system startup time. A fix has been committed to HEAD, RELENG_6, and RELENG_6_1. More details can be found in errata notice FreeBSD-EN-06:01.jail.

(2006/06/01, updated 2006/08/30) Deadlocks have been observed (and can be reproduced) in some cases where snapshots and quotas are both being used on a file system. This problem has been fixed on the HEAD and RELENG_6 branches.

(2006/06/01, updated 2006/08/28) A bug in the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) implementation causes spurious error messages for point-to-point IPv6 links on FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE. This behavior is a regression from FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE. A solution for this problem has been committed to HEAD, RELENG_6, and RELENG_6_1. Further details can be found in errata notice FreeBSD-EN-06:02.net.

(2006/06/01, updated 2006/11/22) Problems have been observed when trying to load packages from multiple CDROMs inside the sysinstall(8) environment. Specifically, the disk-switching functionality in sysinstall(8) seems to become confused about the contents of a disk that has just been requested. This situation has been seen primarily when installing the base system without Xorg (which lives on the first CDROM of a multi-disk set), and then later using sysinstall(8) to load some packages (such as the GNOME or KDE desktop environments) from a subsequent CDROM that depend on Xorg. As a workaround during a new install, one should try to install Xorg along with the base system, or at least before any other packages that depend on it. This problem has been corrected on HEAD and RELENG_6.

(2006/06/01, updated 2006/08/28) An error in the statistics-keeping logic in the UMA kernel memory allocator has led to the number of requests for mbufs denied (as reported by netstat -m) to increase erroneously. A fix for this problem has been committed to HEAD, RELENG_6, and RELENG_6_1. More information is contained in errata notice FreeBSD-EN-06:02.net.

(2006/06/01, update 2006/10/07) A longstanding bug in the i386 bootloader can cause root file system corruption when the nextboot(8) utility is used and the /boot/nextboot.conf configuration file happens to be located after cylinder 1023 on the boot disk. A bugfix has been committed to HEAD and has been merged to RELENG_6.

(2006/06/16, updated 2006/10/07) A locking-related bug has been observed to cause noticeable slowdowns in NFS server performance. A fix has been committed to HEAD and RELENG_6.

(2006/08/28) A local kernel panic in the network stack could be caused by not checking the validity of a pointer before use. This problem has been fixed on HEAD, RELENG_6, and RELENG_6_1, as described in FreeBSD-EN-06:02.net.