Re: HEADS UP - DEVFS ON MASTER

[Alex <ahornung@xxxxxxxxx>]

Just a short *WARNING*:

do *NOT* activate the loading of any sound modules in loader.conf:
it'll cause a panic, probably due to a bug in the kernel linker.

Cheers,
Alex Hornung

2009/8/4 Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>:
>    Alex's GSOC project, DEVFS is now on master and active.  Some care must
>    be taken when upgrading.
>
>    * A full buildworld, buildkernel, installkernel, installworld sequence
>      is needed.  No changes to fstab are needed, /dev will be mounted
>      from devfs automatically by the kernel.
>
>    * If you run a new kernel with an old world (without devfs) you will
>      not be able to login as root, but you will still be able to login
>      as a user and su, and you should still be able to boot single-user.
>
>      In otherwords, things will be messed up but in a fixable way, until
>      both the world and the kernel are in sync.
>
>    * A great deal of testing of basic functions has been done, but
>      there is still a very good chance of breakage.  Please test and
>      report any issues.  Very few GUI components have been tested,
>      so if X or sound stops working it may be a day or two before we
>      can get it whacked back into shape.
>
>    * The master branch may be unstable for a week as wider testing is
>      done.
>
>    * PEOPLE RUNNING CHROOTS: Character and block devices in the filesystem
>      NO LONGER WORK.  If you have chrooted or jailed areas with their own
>      /dev, you have to use mount_devfs in those areas.
>
>    Many features are now working.  We have auto-cloning support for
>    numerous devices but only a few userland utilities have been adjusted
>    to use it.  To reduce issues DEVFS will pre-create a bunch of units for
>    numerous devices so the non-cloning userland utilities still work.
>
>    In addition, fully automatic slice and partition probing and reprobing
>    is now operational.  When you fdisk a drive the slices will pop up
>    in /dev, and when you disklabel a slice the partitinos will pop up
>    as well.  MBR and disklabel edits will properly and automatically
>    reprobe the drive.  IMHO this is a very, very cool feature.
>
>    The nrelease build still has a few issues.  It will work and the intaller
>    will come up, but the installer may have trouble seeing newly created
>    partitions (a 'retry' usually solves the problem).  This is a known
>    issue and will be fixed.
>
>                                        -Matt
>                                        Matthew Dillon
>                                        <dillon@backplane.com>
>