FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE Errata

The FreeBSD Project

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This document lists errata items for FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE, containing significant information discovered after the release or too late in the release cycle to be otherwise included in the release documentation. 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 5.2-RELEASE will be maintained until the release of FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE.

1 Introduction

This errata document contains ``late-breaking news'' about FreeBSD 5.2-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version of this errata document actually distributed with the release (for example, on a CDROM distribution) will be out of date by definition, but other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be consulted as the ``current errata'' for this release.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 5-CURRENT 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

No advisories.

3 Open Issues

(9 Jan 2004) Due to a change in +href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cpp&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+5.2-current"> cpp(1) behavior, the login screen for xdm(1) is in black and white, even on systems with color displays. As a workaround, update to a newer version of the x11/XFree86-4-clients port/package.

(9 Jan 2004) There remain some residual problems with ACPI. In some cases, systems may behave erratically, or hang at boot time. As a workaround, disable ACPI, using the ``safe mode'' option of the bootloader or using the hint.acpi.0.disabled kernel environment variable. These problems are being investigated. For problems that have not already been reported (check the mailing list archives before posting), sending the output of +href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=dmesg&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+5.2-current"> dmesg(8) and +href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=acpidump&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+5.2-current"> acpidump(8) to the FreeBSD-CURRENT mailing list may help diagnose the problem.

(9 Jan 2004) In some cases, ATA devices may behave erratically, particularly SATA devices. Reported symptoms include command timeouts or missing interrupts. These problems appear to be timing-dependent, making them rather difficult to isolate. Workarounds include:

Turn off ATA DMA using the ``safe mode'' option of the bootloader or the hw.ata.ata_dma sysctl variable.
Use the host's BIOS setup options to put the ATA controller in its ``legacy mode'', if available.
Disable ACPI, for example using the ``safe mode'' option of the bootloader or using the hint.acpi.0.disabled kernel environment variable.

(9 Jan 2004) Installing over NFS when using the install floppies requires that the nfsclient.ko module be manually loaded from the third floppy disk. This can be done by following the prompts when +href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysinstall&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+5.2-current"> sysinstall(8) launches to load a driver off of the third floppy disk.

(9 Jan 2004) The use of multiple vchans (virtual audio channels with dynamic mixing in software) in the +href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=pcm&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+5.2-current"> pcm(4) driver has been known to cause some instability.

(10 Jan 2004) Although APIC interrupt routing seems to work correctly on many systems, on some others (such as some laptops) it can cause various errors, such as +href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ata&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+5.2-current"> ata(4) errors or hangs when starting or exiting X11. For these situations, it may be advisable to disable APIC routing, using the ``safe mode'' of the bootloader or the hint.apic.0.disabled loader tunable. Note that disabling APIC is not compatible with SMP systems.

(10 Jan 2004) The NFSv4 client may panic when attempting an NFSv4 operation against an NFSv3/NFSv2-only server. This problem has been fixed with revision 1.4 of src/sys/rpc/rpcclnt.c in FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT.

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(11 Jan 2004) Some problems have been encountered when using third-party NSS modules, +such as nss_ldap, and groups with large membership lists. These +have been fixed with revision 1.2 of src/include/nss.h and +revision 1.2 of src/lib/libc/net/nss_compat.c in FreeBSD +5.2-CURRENT.

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(13 Jan 2004) The FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT release notes incorrectly stated that GCC was a post-release GCC 3.3.3 snapshot. They should have +stated that GCC was a pre-release +GCC 3.3.3 snapshot.

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(13 Jan 2004) The sysutils/kdeadmin3 port/package has a bug in the KUser component that can cause deletion of the root user from the system password file. Users are strongly urged +to upgrade to version 3.1.4_1 of this port/package.

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(21 Jan 2004) Some bugs in the IPsec implementation imported from the KAME Project can +result in memory objects being freed before all references to them were removed. Reported +symptoms include erratic behavior or kernel panics after flushing the Security Policy +Database (SPD). Some of these problems have been fixed in FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT in rev. +1.31 of src/sys/netinet6/ipsec.c, rev. 1.136 of src/sys/netinet/in_pcb.c, and revs. 1.63 and 1.64 of src/sys/netkey/key.c. More information about these problems has +been posted to the FreeBSD-CURRENT mailing list, in particular the thread entitled ``[PATCH] IPSec fixes''.

4 Late-Breaking News

(10 Jan 2004) The TCP implementation in FreeBSD now includes protection against a certain class of TCP MSS resource exhaustion attacks, in the form of limits on the size and rate of TCP segments. The first limit sets the minimum allowed maximum TCP segment size, and is controlled by the net.inet.tcp.minmss sysctl variable (the default value is 216 bytes). The second limit is set by the net.inet.tcp.minmssoverload variable, and controls the maximum rate of connections whose average segment size is less than net.inet.tcp.minmss. Connections exceeding this packet rate are reset and dropped. Because this feature was added late in the 5.2-RELEASE release cycle, connection rate limiting is disabled by default, but can be enabled manually by assigning a non-zero value to net.inet.tcp.minmssoverload (the default value in 5.2-CURRENT at the time of this writing is 1000 packets per second).

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