FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE Errata

The FreeBSD Project

$FreeBSD: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/errata/article.sgml,v - 1.1.2.70 2002/06/27 17:01:35 bmah Exp $
+ 1.1.2.72 2002/07/13 17:37:13 bmah Exp $

This document lists errata items for FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE, containing significant information discovered after the release. This information includes security advisories, as well as news relating to the software or documentation that could affect its operation or usability. An up-to-date version of this document should always be consulted before installing this version of FreeBSD.

This errata document for FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE will be maintained until the release of FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE.

1 Introduction

This errata document contains ``late-breaking news'' about FreeBSD 4.6-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version of this errata document actually distributed with the release (for example, on a CDROM distribution) will be out of date by definition, but other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be consulted as the ``current errata'' for this release.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 4-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 Security Advisories

A buffer overflow in the resolver could be exploited by a malicious domain name server or an attacker forging DNS messages. This could potentially be used to force arbitrary code to run on a client machine with the privileges of a resolver-using application. See security advisory FreeBSD-SA-02:28 for more information and a fix.

+ +

Badly-formed NFS packets could trigger a buffer overflow + in + tcpdump(1). For a fix to + this problem, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-02:29.

+ +

+ ktrace(1) can be used to + trace the operation of formerly-privileged processes. This + is undesirable, as it is then possible to leak information + obtained while these processes had elevated privileges. See + security advisory FreeBSD-SA-02:30 for a workaround and a + fix.

3 Late-Breaking +

3 Late-Breaking News

In FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE, the default maximum TCP window size was lowered from 65536 bytes to 57334 bytes, for better compatability with some versions of IPFilter.

A recently-discovered interaction between the FreeBSD kernel and the archivers/zip port can result in some errors on the alpha platform. A post-release fix has been committed to the FreeBSD ports tree; versions of the archivers/zip port beginning with 2.3_1 will function correctly.

On the alpha platform, the de(4) and txp(4) drivers were moved from the boot kernel on the floppy images to modules on the mfsroot floppy. This change was made in order to get the alpha kernel to fit onto the boot floppy. It should be transparent to all users, as sysinstall(8) will automatically load any kernel modules it finds on the mfsroot floppy.

Several last-minute patches were made to the x11-servers/XFree86-4-Server package. These allow the various server configuration programs to give better support for the sysmouse device supported by moused(8). The binary packages on the CDROMs and the FTP sites incoporate this patch and bear the version number 4.2.0_3. However, the ports collection included in the distribution does not contain this patch. To get an updated version, use CVSup to obtain a more recent ports collection.

Some FreeBSD/i386 users have experienced difficulties reading from certain ATA CDROM drives. Specific models on which this problem has been observed include the AOpen 48x, 52x, and 56x CDROM drives, as well as the Mitsumi Slim CRMC-SR242S CDROM drive. A typical symptom is the following error message on the console and/or dmesg(8) buffer (sometimes accompanied by a kernel panic):

     acd0: READ_BIG command timeout - resetting
     ata1: resetting devices .. done

In some cases, this bug can prevent installation of FreeBSD from an affected CDROM drive. It can cause sysinstall(8) to hang while extracting distribution files from CD media.

A two-part workaround listed here has shown to be helpful in some (but not necessarily all) cases. First, to allow a CDROM installation, it is necessary to modify the normal CDROM installation procedure:

Start the computer with a FreeBSD installation CDROM in the drive.

Wait for a console message similar to:

     Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
     Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds...

Immediately interrupt the boot process by pressing the Space bar on the keyboard.

Enter the following three lines at the ok prompt:

     ok set hw.ata.ata_dma="1"

     ok set hw.ata.atapi_dma="1"

     ok boot

Continue the installation as normal.

The second part of the workaround takes place after completing the CDROM installation (or a successful source upgrade). It consists of configuring the ata(4) driver so that future CDROM reads work correctly:

Add the following two lines to /boot/loader.conf (creating this file if it does not already exist):
```
     hw.ata.ata_dma="1"
     hw.ata.atapi_dma="1"
 
```
Reboot the machine.

As of this writing, this issue is under continuing investigation.

+ +

Due to a bug in the release generation process, some of + the directories under /usr/share/examples are empty (most notably + /usr/share/examples/cvsup). A + partial workaround is to install the sshare distribution via + sysinstall(8). /usr/src/share/examples will then contain + the missing files.

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