FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Errata

The FreeBSD Project

$FreeBSD: - src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/errata/article.sgml,v 1.45 - 2003/08/04 13:53:58 rushani Exp $
+ src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/errata/article.sgml,v 1.46 + 2003/08/04 15:23:20 bmah Exp $

This document lists errata items for FreeBSD 5.1-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 5.1-RELEASE will be maintained until the release of FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE.

1 Introduction

This errata document contains ``late-breaking news'' about FreeBSD 5.1-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version of this errata document actually distributed with the release (for example, on a CDROM distribution) will be out of date by definition, but other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be consulted as the ``current errata'' for this release.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 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

The implementation of the realpath(3) function contains a single-byte buffer overflow bug. This may have various impacts, depending on the application using realpath(3) and other factors. This bug was fixed on the 5-CURRENT - development branch and the 5.1-RELEASE is not affected. - However, this change may not have been noted in the release - documentation. For more information, see security advisory - FreeBSD-SA-03:08.

3 Open Issues

The RAIDframe disk driver described in raid(4) is non-functional for this release.

ACPI seems to make some i386 machines unstable. Turning off ACPI support may help solve some of these problems; see an item in Section 4.

An integer overflow could cause kernel panics on PAE-using machines with certain memory sizes. This bug has been corrected on both the RELENG_5_1 and HEAD branches. A workaround for this problem is to remove some memory, update the system in question, and reinstall the memory.

Attempting to write to an msdosfs(5) file system that has been upgraded from read-only to read-write via mount -u will cause the system to lock up. To work around this problem, unmount the file system first, then mount it again with the appropriate options instead of using mount -u.

4 Late-Breaking News

ipfw(4) should work correctly on strict-alignment 64-bit architectures such as alpha and sparc64.

The release notes should have stated that the libthr library is built by default for the i386 platform.

FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE includes some new boot loader scripts designed to make booting FreeBSD with different options easier. This may help diagnose bootstrapping problems. These scripts build on the existing Forth-based boot loader scripts (thus, /boot/loader.conf and other existing loader configuration files still apply). They are only installed by default for new binary installs on i386 machines. The new scripts present a boot-time menu that controls how FreeBSD is booted, and include options to turn off ACPI, a ``safe mode'' boot, single-user booting, and verbose booting. ``Safe mode'' booting can be particularly useful when compatibility with a system's hardware is uncertain, and sets the following kernel tunable variables:

 hint.acpi.0.disabled=1 # disable ACPI (i386 only)
 hw.ata.ata_dma=0       # disable IDE DMA
 hw.ata.atapi_dma=0     # disable ATAPI/IDE DMA
 hw.ata.wc=0            # disable IDE disk write cache
 hw.eisa_slots=0        # disable probing for EISA devices

For new installs on i386 architecture machines, sysinstall(8) will try to determine if ACPI was disabled via the new boot loader scripts mentioned above, and if so, ask if this change should be made permanent.

The release notes should have mentioned that work on the following features was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA): OpenPAM, NSS support, PAE support, various MAC framework updates, the GEOM disk geometry system.

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