This is a list of open issues that need to be resolved for FreeBSD 5.3. If you have any updates for this list, please e-mail re@FreeBSD.org.
| Issue | Status | Responsible | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| if_em wedge | &status.wip; | &a.bms; | More problems have been reported with the if_em driver. These appear to also be related to the ALTQ code. |
| Reports of sodealloc() panic under heavy load | &status.wip; | &a.rwatson;, &a.green; | There have been reports of a so_count invariant violation in sofree(), which may relate to race conditions in sofree() against accept(), which were recently corrected in 6.x, and has been merged to 5.x. It has not yet been confirmed that the race fix corrects the symptom, as it takes several days to reproduce in high load environments, and has not yet been reproduced by the FreeBSD release engineering team in testing. |
| Issue | Status | Responsible | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reports of poor performance of the if_de driver (de ethernet - intrfaces) | + interfaces)&status.wip; | &a.rwatson;, &a.jmg; | There have been reports that if_de ethernet cds behave poorly when running with debug.mpsafenet=1, even though the driver is marked to run all portions with the Giant lock. This suggests a race condition - specific to this drive, which is currently being debugged. | + specific to this drive, which is currently being debugged. A patch + has been posted that appears to correct the problem, and will be + merged to 6.x and 5.x shortly.
| Reports of poor performance with the if_re driver (re ethernet + interfaces) | +&status.wip; | +&a.jmg; | +There have been reports that specific gigabit ethernet cards + supported by the if_re driver are experiencing poor performance; a + patch has been posted that corrects timer and interrupt problems + with the driver, and is believed to correct the performace problems. + The patch will be merged to 6.x and 5.x shortly. | +
| Issue | Status | Responsible | Description |
|---|
| Issue | Status | Responsible | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entropy harvesting optimizations | &status.wip; | &a.rwatson;, &a.markm; | Entropy harvesting in the interrupt and incoming packet paths currently involves a large number of mutex operations. In order to improve performance, it is desirable to reduce the number of mutex operations substantially. Improvements in the harvesting locking scheme have been merged to 6.x, but are considered too risky at this stage to be merged to 5.x until after 5.3. |
| GDB thread support | &status.wip; | &a.davidxu;, &a.marcel; | With improved support for threading primitives, support is now required to ease debugging of threaded applications. Ideally, this support will work for both libthr and libkse threading models. |
| KSE support for sparc64 | &status.wip; | &a.kensmith; | Kernel bits implemented, userland not implemented. |
| truss support for ptrace | -- | -- | Almost all process debugging tools have been updated to use non-procfs kernel primitives, with the exception of truss(1). As procfs is considered deprecated due to its inherent security risks, it is highly desirable to update truss to operate in a post-procfs world. &a.des; had prototype patches; &a.robert; is developing and testing patches now. Support for system call tracing has been added to ptrace(). |
| FAST_IPSEC and KAME compatibility | &status.new; | -- | FAST_IPSEC currently cannot be used directly with the KAME IPv6 implementation, requiring an additional level of IP tunnel indirection to protect IPv6 packets when using hardware crypto acceleration. This issue must be resolved so that the two services may more easily be used together. Among other things, this will require a careful review of the handling of mbuf header copying and m_tag support in the KAME IPv6 code. |
| rpc.lockd(8) stability | -- | -- | A process cannot be interrupted while waiting on a lock. Fixing this requires that the RPC code be taught how to deal with lock cancellation and interruption events. |
| Revised kld build infrastructure | &status.new; | &a.peter; | Kernel modules are currently built independently from a kernel configuration, and independently from one another, resulting in substantially redundant compilation of objects, as well as the inability to easily manage compile-time options for kernel objects (such as MAC, PAE, etc) that may require conditional compilation in the kernel modules. In order to improve build performance and better support options of this sort, the KLD build infrastructure needs to be revamped. &a.peter; has done some initial prototyping, and should be contacted before starting on this work. |
| Merge of Darwin msdosfs, other fixes | &status.new; | -- | Apple's Darwin operating system has fairly extensive improvements to msdosfs and other kernel services; these fixes must be reviewed and merged to the FreeBSD tree. |
| Race conditions in truss | Errata candidate | &a.robert; | Truss appears to contain a race condition during the start-up of debugging, which can result in truss failing to attach to the process before it exits. The symptom is that truss reports that it cannot open the procfs node supporting the process being debugged. A bug also appears to exist where in truss will hang if execve() returns ENOENT. A further race appears to exist in which truss will return "PIOCWAIT: Input/output error" occasionally on startup. The fix for this sufficiently changes process execution handling that we will defer the fix to post-5.0 and consider this errata. |
| More truss problems | &status.new; | -- | Truss appears to have another problem. It is repeatable by running "truss -f fsck -p /", suspending it with ^Z, and then killing truss. It will leave behind the fsck processes which will be unkillable. |
| ACL_MASK override of umask support in UFS | &status.new; | &a.rwatson; | Many systems supporting POSIX.1e ACLs permit a minor violation to that specification, in which the ACL_MASK entry overrides the umask, rather than being intersected with it. The resulting semantics can be useful in group-oriented environments, and as such would be very helpful on FreeBSD. |
| filedesc LOR | &status.new; | -- | The LOR reported in PR kern/55175 needs to be fixed. Filedesc locking needs to be heavily reviewed in general. |
| MAC support for NFS Server | &status.new; | &a.rwatson; | Currently, MAC protections are enforced only on locally originated file system operations (VOPs), and not on RPCs generated via the NFS server. Improvements in NFS server credential handling are required to correct this problem, as well as the introduction of new entry points to properly label NFS credentials and perform enforcement properly. |
| busdma in all PCI drivers | &status.wip; | -- | All PCI drivers must use busdma for DMA; no use of vtophys() will be permitted for any recent device driver. ISA drivers may be exempt. |
| KSE support for alpha | &status.wip; | &a.marcel; | Userland bits implemented, kernel bits not implemented. |
| CAM locking | &status.wip; | &a.scottl;, &a.gibbs; | For kernel API/ABI compatibility reasons, it would be desirable to have the CAM locking strategy determined and loosely implemented for 5.3. |
| syscons not working on Sparc64 Ultra-30 | &status.new; | -- | When running syscons on an Ultra-30 with Creator-3D typing characters on the keyboard produces garbage. Problem reported by &a.kris;. Debugging difficult due to lack of this particular configuration among developers and problem isn't present on similar hardware (e.g. no problem on Ultra-60 w/Creator-3D). |
| Issue | Status | Responsible | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| i386 Floppy Installation Docs | &status.done; | Gavin Atkinson, &a.bmah; | The installation documentation doesn't take into account the
new floppy images (with a full kernel split across multiple
disks). This should be updated. References: docs/70485 (closed) |
| Finish hardware notes trimming | &status.done; | &a.simon;, &a.brueffer; | Finish removing mention of individual devices in the hardware notes and use auto-generated lists, based on driver manual pages, instead. |
| sound(4) related manual pages | &status.done; | &a.simon; | The snd(4) and pcm(4) drivers have been renamed but their
manual pages are still outdated. sound(4) has to be added and
pcm(4), csa(4), gusc(4), sbc(4), and uaudio(4) should be revised.
Other manual pages which refer to pcm(4) (if any) should possibly
be revised, too. In addition, supported cards list needs to be
updated. References: Manpage for snd_solo on -doc@ [PATCH] sound(4) related manpages 5.3 TODO item on -doc@ src/share/man/man4/Makefile rev.1.279 |
| Sound section in the Handbook | &status.done; | &a.blackend; | This section is outdated, some rewrites are needed for
5.3-RELEASE. References: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/multimedia/chapter.sgml rev.1.94 |
| FDP documentations related pcm(4) | &status.new; | -- | With the snd(4) and pcm(4) drivers changes, documentations (FAQ) regarding the use of these drivers need an update. |
| Early Adopter's Guide | &status.done; | &a.bmah;, &a.trhodes; | Xin LI pointed out that FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE is the first
stable release on 5.X and it is (hopefully) not for early
adopters. Early Adopter's Guide is still useful, but
contains a bit old information. Some parts of this guide
need a rewrite, and this document should be published
as "4.X to 5.X Migration Guide", which focuses difference
between 4.X and 5.X. References: Draft for review discussion on -doc@ and -current@ |
| Installation Notes | &status.new; | &a.trhodes; | Some parts are outdated. doc/70485 has been committed, but
more work is needed to reflect the realities. bmah@ pointed out
that we should have "quick-start" installation guide for each
platform instead of the current ones because they become too long
and difficult to be maintained. References: doc/70485 (closed) |
| Xorg | &status.done; | Ken Tom, &a.blackend; | Update the X11 chapter of the Handbook for X.Org's X11
server. References: books/handbook/config/chapter.sgml rev.1.147 |
| rc.d scripts | &status.done; | &a.trhodes; | Ch.11.4 and 11.5 of the Handbook must be updated to mention
the new rc.d scripts and some ports use /etc/rc.conf for their
configuration. References: books/handbook/config/chapter.sgml rev.1.170 books/handbook/config/chapter.sgml rev.1.172 |
| Handbook's kernel configuration chapter | &status.done; | &a.ceri; | Chapter 8 must be updated to match 5.3-RELEASE. References: docs/70674 (closed) books/handbook/kernelconfig/chapter.sgml rev.1.135 |
| Handbook's IPsec section | &status.new; | -- | Some parts of Section 14.10 are outdated and are not correct
for 5.X systems. References: ipsec on -doc@ Problem with IPSEC in handbook on -doc@ |
| Handbook's Vinum chapter | &status.new; | -- | Vinum chapter needs to be revised for 5.X systems. |
| Issue | Status | Responsible | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| KSE as the default threads library | &status.untested; | &a.davidxu;, &a.deischen; | KSE has matured to the point of being more stable and POSIX-compliant than the traditional libc_r. All Tier-1 platforms MUST have stable KSE support for 5.3 in order to support a consistent transition. Additionally, all ports that depend on the pthreads API must be modified to properly detect and support the default threading library. |
| Updated binutils for all platforms | &status.untested; | &a.obrien; | Binutils needs updating in order to support new platforms, newer GDB versions, and Thread Local Storage. |
| gcc 3.3 floating point alignment regression | &status.untested; | The previous GCC 3.3 snapshot included regressions in alignment of floating point arguments, resulting in a substantial performance degradation. The recent GCC 3.4.2 import should fix this, but more testing is needed. | |
| in6_pcbnotify() panic with TCP | &status.untested; | &a.rwatson; | &a.kuriyama; has reportged a failed locking assertion with IPv6 TCP notifications. A patch has been committed to the CVS HEAD and RELENG_5 and needs further testing. |
| Per-platform Thread-Local Storage | &status.untested; | &a.dfr;, &a.marcel; | To complete support for thread-local storage on FreeBSD, per-architecture changes must be made. Currently pending platforms are amd64, alpha, ia64, i386, sparc64, and powerpc. |
| SMP instability under load | &status.untested; | &a.dwhite;, &a.alc; | High load on SMP systems appears to result in a hard hang related to VM IPI. &a.dwhite; has prepared a candidate patch that appears to resolve this instability, which is currently in testing for merge to the CVS HEAD. |
| Fine-grained network stack locking without Giant | &status.untested; | &a.rwatson; | Significant parts of the network stack (especially IPv4, UNIX domain IPC, and sockets) now have fine-grained locking of their data structures. It's possible to run many common network subsystems and services without the Giant lock. However, a number of device drivers and less mainstream network subsystems are currently not MPSAFE. By 5.3-RELEASE, it is necessary to have the vast majority of network code running without Giant, including sockets, permitting complete local<->remote delivery without grabbing Giant. |
| kld support for amd64 | &status.untested; | &a.obrien;, &a.iedowse; | KLDs work when loaded from userland, but not from the loader. kldxref and loader support has been committed to HEAD and RELENG_5 and needs final testing. |
| ATA panics under sparc64 | &status.untested; | &a.sos;, &a.scottl; | Recent changes to the ATA driver trigger a bug on sparc64 that causes a panic on boot. This was caused by bugs in busdma that have been hopefully fixed. |
| ifconf() sleep warning | &status.untested; | &a.brooks; | The ifconf() ioctl for listing network interfaces performs a copyout() while holding the global ifnet list mutex. This generates a witness warning in the event that copyout() generates a page fault, and risks more serious problems. A patch has been committed to HEAD and RELENG_5, but requires testing. |
| poll()/select() application wedge reports with debug.mpsafenet=1 | &status.untested; | &a.rwatson; | There are reports of applications wedging in poll() and select() while running the network stack without the Giant lock. A recent sleepq change appears to have caused some of the observed problems to go away (others are difficult to test for due to recent SMP instability). A fix has been committed to CVS HEAD and merged to RELENG_5 and appears to resolve problems with poll(); we are waiting for feedback that it has corrected the reported problems with select() also before moving this to "testing" status. |
| if_em wedging under high pps | &status.untested; | &a.mlaier; | There have been several reports of if_em cards "wedging" under high packets-per-second load. A fix is in RELENG_5 now. |
| Panic on USB detach | &status.untested | &a.imp;, &a.scottl; | A recent regression in the USB code is causing panics when a USB device detaches, especially USB hubs. A fix is in RELENG_5 now. |
| KAME IPSEC "ENOBUFS" problem with racoon and mbuma | &status.untested; | &a.rwatson; | There are reports that racoon is unable to complete IKE negotiation due to a send to the pfkey socket returning ENOBUFS. This appears to be a result of an incorrect assumption about mbuf data size due to a change resulting from mbuma. A fix for this is in RELENG_5 now. |
| BIND9 import into 5-CURRENT | &status.untested; | &a.dougb;, &a.des;, &a.trhodes; | BIND9 is now in RELENG_5 and HEAD. Testing is needed of basic functionality, migration from 8.x, and 3rd party packages in the ports tree. |
| Synaptics touchpad problems | &status.untested; | &a.philip; | Synaptics updates to the psm(4) driver have resulted in poor interactivity for taps and button press events for some users. Support is now disabled by default but work will procede to fix the underlying problems. |
| Scheduler-related hangs involving threads | &status.untested; | &a.scottl;, &a.julian; | Significant work has happened in the scheduler to fix stability problems. More testing for UP and SMP under heavily load is needed. |
| NFS over IPv6 problems | &status.untested; | &a.dwhite; | &a.kuriyama; has reported problems with NFS over IPv6 not functioning correctly as of the improved NFS support for disconnection changes. &a.dwhite; has tracked down the source of the problem (EMSGSIZE being returned by IPv6 UDP send routine due to fragmentation), and is currently exploring possible fixes. A patch has been generated and sent to the KAME team for review. |
| Reports of tcp_output() spinning; socket buffer corruption | &status.untested; | &a.rwatson; | There have been reports of occasional corruption of socket buffers and/or spinning in tcp_output(). This may have been the result of missing socket buffer locking in tcp_output(), which has now been corrected in 6.x and 5.x; the release engineering team is awaiting word as to whether this fixes the problems experienced by the submitter. |
| Reports of hangs using i4b (isdn4bsd) | &status.untested; | &a.rwatson; | There have been reports of system hangs while using ISDN with the i4b ISDN framework on SMP systems. These likely result from insufficient synchronization in the i4b implementation when runnning without the Giant lock over the network stack. The workaround until this is fixed is to re-assert the Giant lock over the stack when i4b is compiled into the kernel; this has been committed to 6.x and and 5.x. The Release Engineering team awaits word that this corrects the problems experienced by the submitter. |
| Problems with multicast and setuid binaries/daemons | &status.untested; | &a.rwatson;, &a.csjp; | There have been reports that multicast socket options on raw sockets no longer work properly with daemons changing privilege or setuid binaries. These symptoms have been tracked down to bugs relating to permitting limited use of raw sockets in jail(). A patch correcting these problems has been merged to 6.x and 5.x. The Release Engineering team awaits news that this corrects the problems reported by the submitter. |