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Date:      Wed, 05 Sep 2001 21:11:16 -0500
From:      Jim Bryant <kc5vdj@yahoo.com>
To:        Dave Cornejo <dave@dogwood.com>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: unpleasant ps output and possible related problems.
Message-ID:  <3B96DB44.6080405@yahoo.com>
References:  <200109052333.f85NXeB44962@white.dogwood.com>

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Dave Cornejo wrote:

> I apologize for not having any idea where to start on this.  I am not
> whining for someone to fix something, merely reporting an odd behavior
> that I have now seen on multiple machines in cae it means something to
> anybody.
> 
> I am tracking current almost daily on three machines.  Starting
> yesterday I managed to get one box that refused to go into multiuser
> mode it would run the rc script and then hang somewhere executing the
> scripts in /usr/local/etc/rc.d.  If I Ctrl-C'ed it - it would come up
> in the single-user mode shell.  no login prompt, just the shell.  I
> could however telnet into the thing most things seemed to work.
> 
> In this state it had hung without starting INN - so I su'ed and tried
> to start it.  INN starts, but I end up at a prompt with a uid of news!
> If I exit that, INN dies.
> 
> I do a ps -ax and I get some corrupt lines:
> 
>   471  p0  Is     0:00.07 -csh (csh)
>   473  p0  I      0:00.01 su -m
>   474  p0  S      0:00.04 \M-[\M-!\^D\b\M-X\M-!\^D\b (csh)
> 12673  p0  R+     0:00.00 ps ax
>   466  v0  Is+    0:00.01 /usr/libexec/getty Pc ttyv0
> 
> In troubleshooting this I went back to an older kernel and the problem
> persists.  Change back to an old world and it's gone.  Tried the
> new kernel with old world and it also seems to work fine.  So the
> problem seems to be somewhere in the libs or userland.
> 
> Now I went and looked at some other systems rebuilt yesterday evening
> and today and while they still work I see the same sort of corruption
> as above in the ps output - but no other apparent side effects.
> 
> The corrupted line shows up in many different places and users, and
> the exact contents vary, but there's always a "(csh)" at the end.


When you rebuild and install a new kernel, are you also doing a `make buildworld`
and a `make installworld` in /usr/src before you reboot?


Sometimes changes to userland are trivial, and you may not need to rebuild userland,
but utmp corruption is indicative of changes that require userland be rebuilt and
installed.

Ideally, you should buildworld/installworld *EVERY* time you build a -current
kernel.

Of course, if you have already done this, feel free to issue me a boot to the head.

You note that you are running innd, please don't tell me that you are using
-current in a production environment...  -current is always subject to massive
*FUNDAMENTAL* changes with only a moment's notice, and breakage without any
notice at all...  Using -current in a production environment, unless seriously
justified [such as -current being more stable than -stable], is a fine way to
put yourself in a position to commit hari-kari, and nobody wants that.

jim
-- 
     ET has one helluva sense of humor!
He's always anal-probing right-wing schizos!
--------------------------------------------
           POWER TO THE PEOPLE!


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