Re: install/49579: postinstall doesn't detect/fix ksyms major device number change

["John D. Baker" <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR install/49579; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "John D. Baker" <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost>
To: Lloyd Parkes <lloyd%must-have-coffee.gen.nz@localhost>
Cc: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Subject: Re: install/49579: postinstall doesn't detect/fix ksyms major device
 number change
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:40:12 -0600 (CST)

 On Sat, 17 Jan 2015, Lloyd Parkes wrote:
 
 > On 17/01/2015, at 6:42 pm, John D. Baker <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost> wrote:
 > 
 > > This looks like you updated to amd64 on a machine previously running
 > > i386:
 > 
 > I've had a very close look and I'm sure you are right.
 [snip]
 > 
 > I'm not sure it.s worth trying to catch this problem.  Switching from
 > i386 to amd64 is so easy that nobody is ever going to read any
 > documentation and in my case, the conversion was many years in the
 > past.  If there is an easy way to put something in postinstall, then
 > sure, but I won't complain if this PR is close with "user error".
 
 Easy, but not without pitfalls, as you've seen.  A great many device
 major/minor differences exist between i386 and amd64 (and probably among
 all ports) which may range from annoying (such as clockctl for chrooted
 ntpd) to catastrophic (wd8[a-p] and higher disks).
 
 When I changed my fileserver from i386 to amd64, I was unaware of the
 difference in major/minor numbers between ports, resulting in damaging
 one unit in my RAID.  It ran in degraded mode for a couple of months
 before patches to raidframe were developed to permit a system running
 RAID-R (RAID-5 w/rotated sparing) to complete reconstruction.
 
 If one updates using 'sysinst' from some boot/install CD, I think the
 device nodes get re-made.  If one updates by untar-ing the sets and
 running 'postinstall', then while the MAKEDEV script will be updated,
 the device nodes are not touched.
 
 I didn't mean to hijack this PR, but reading it reminded me of an
 all-to-familiar scenario.
 
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