Re: Smoking gun: NetBSD 6.0.1 userland instability

[Donald Lee <MacPPC2%c.icompute.com@localhost>]

At 12:09 AM +0000 3/19/13, David Brownlee wrote:
[snip]
>> I fetched "cvs checkout -r netbsd-5 src -P" and built it with the 
>> "./build.sh"
>> above.  The build worked.  I did the build on a clean 5.2 system.
>>
>> I am happy to build some kernels.  It looks like this script puts
>> the kernel in:
>> /usr/obj/sys/arch/macppc/compile/GENERIC/netbsd
>>
>> I need some help with an algorithm to "chop" the source.  I don't know
>> enough about the naming conventions in cvs to select dates/tags/versions
>> that I can try between 5.0 and 6.0 to find the point where it starts failing.
>>
>> It would be even nicer if someone would give me some suggested labels to
>> try, with some minimal knowledge of where the kernel was stable/broken,
>> and where related changes must have been added.
>
>Sorry - I didn't really provide enough detail in my original email :/
>
>Its possible the change which is causing your issue could have been
>introduced into NetBSD-current any time since the NetBSD-5.0 release
>(since if it was a significant functionality change it would not have
>bee pulled up into NetBSD-5.1 or 5.2). Technically it could even have
>been introduced after NetBSD 5.0 was tagged and before it was
>released, but thats much less likely.
>
>So, NetBSD 5.0 was released April 2009 and we're now around March 2012.
>
>I would probably start by running a quick test with the latest macpcc
>kernel from http://nyftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/ - just to
>make sure it hasn't been fixed by someone already :)

Thanks much.  I'm inclined to skip testing HEAD for now,
because I have already tried
the 6.1 RC1 kernel and it failed.  If someone did fix this, one would
hope that whoever fixed it would have spoken up by now. ;->

>Assuming not, pick a midpoint, say Oct 2010
>
>cvs -d anoncvs%anoncvs.netbsd.org@localhost:/cvsroot co -P -D 2010-10-01 src
>(build and test the kernel)
>Binary chop forward or backwards by updating the checked out tree +/- 9 months
>eg: cvs up -dP -D 2010-01-01
>
>If a given month fails to build I'd probably pick the 1st of the
>previous or following month.
>
>Each (successful build) pass should half the window, hopefully about 5
>passes should narrow it down to a month.

Since the cvs checkouts and builds take a while (hours) I'll put a little
work into trying to pick tags that seem to make sense and align 
roughly with the dates I want.  Christos suggested a file to use to
do this (sys/sys/param.h)

My first build (in progress) is near netbsd-6-base, which appears to be the
"branch point" of 6.0.  I did a "cvs up -D 2012-02-11 src"

I'll keep you posted.  This may take a few days.

-dgl-