Subject: Re: Upgrading to -current
To: None <newton@communica.com.au>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Holo.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: port-sun3
Date: 08/26/1996 15:43:35
> I sucked down the tarballs for -current yesterday and installed them
> last night.  My first step was to attempt to build a -current kernel,
> but that was an abysmal failure:  /sys/nfs/nfs_vnops.c failed to
> compile with the -1.1 compiler (complained about an internal compiler
> error about 3500-or-so lines into the file).

I think this error goes away if you turn off optimization.  For your
purposes, it might be good enough to compile that one file by hand with
optimization off.

> At that point I resigned myself to writing-off the machine for a
> couple of days as it rebuilt the entire system from scratch:  cd
> /usr/src; make build.

> Yow!  That isn't going to work either.  I've now started it on two
> occasions, and after running for about two hours it falls over whilst
> running "make depend" in lib/librpcsvc.  The compiler and "make"
> abort with Bus Errors and exec() causes more of 'em (so I can no
> longer login to the machine).  This has now happened twice.

This sounds like the "everything dumps core" bug.  It happens on some
machines with depressing reproducibility; it doesn't happen on others.
For example, I have a -3/150 that it happens on and a -3/260 that has
been up for a couple of weeks (of software building, too) without a
single strange coredump.  It's a hard bug and AFAIK nobody knows what's
doing it, though I think gwr has some vague guesses.

> ... from which I surmise that exec() has stopped working again :-)

It's not really exec().  It appears to have something to do with shared
libraries; an executable that uses no shared libraries will
(invariably, in my experience) work, even when "everything dumps core".

> Can anyone offer any pointers to info sources which deal with
> upgrading from 1.1 to -current?

I'm surprised the binary snapshot you got is that old.  If you want, I
can give someone a tar of binaries built from -current, and/or a dd of
a zip disk I keep as a disaster-recovery disk....

> Could this be related to the rumored flakiness of the ncr_si driver
> when si_options = 7 ?

It may be related, but it's not that simple. :-(

> Has anyone had more success than I have?

Well, if you don't start over from the beginning each time, after a few
tries you're likely to get a full build.  Don't forget to "unlimit"
first (or sh equivalent, if you use sh) or the build will die while
building libc.

> Should the build be carried out in single-user or multi-user mode?

I've never tried single-user; it might be worth experimenting.

> Am I wasting my time?

Unlikely...unless you give up. :-)

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
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