FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE Errata

This errata document contains “late-breaking news” about FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE Before installing this version, it is important to consult this document to learn about any post-release discoveries or problems that may already have been found and fixed.

Any version of this errata document actually distributed with the release (for example, on a CDROM distribution) will be out of date by definition, but other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be consulted as the “current errata” for this release. These other copies of the errata are located at http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/, plus any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this location.

Source and binary snapshots of FreeBSD 8.4-STABLE also contain up-to-date copies of this document (as of the time of the snapshot).

For a list of all FreeBSD CERT security advisories, see http://www.FreeBSD.org/security/ or ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/.

Problems described in the following security advisories have been fixed in 8.4-RELEASE. For more information, consult the individual advisories available from http://security.FreeBSD.org/.

[20130613] The vtnet(4) network interface driver displays the following message upon configuration when using QEMU 1.4.1 and later:

vtnet0: error setting host MAC filter table

This message is harmless when the interface has only one MAC address. The patch for this issue is filed to a PR kern/178955.

[20130609] There is incompatibility in jail(8) configuration because the jail(8) utility and rc.d/jail script has been changed. More specifically, the following sysctl(8) variables cannot be used to set the default parameters for jails:

security.jail.mount_zfs_allowed
security.jail.mount_procfs_allowed
security.jail.mount_nullfs_allowed
security.jail.mount_devfs_allowed
security.jail.mount_allowed
security.jail.chflags_allowed
security.jail.allow_raw_sockets
security.jail.sysvipc_allowed
security.jail.socket_unixiproute_only
security.jail.set_hostname_allowed

These could be set by manually using sysctl(8) utility, the sysctl.conf(5) file, or for some of them the following variables in rc.conf(5):

jail_set_hostname_allow="yes"
jail_socket_unixiproute_only="yes"
jail_sysvipc_allow="yes"

These parameters must now be specified in jail_parameters (or jail_jailname_parameters for per-jail configuration) in rc.conf(5). For example:

jail_parameters="allow.sysvipc allow.raw_sockets"

The valid keywords are the following. For more detail, see jail(8) manual page.

allow.set_hostname
allow.sysvipc
allow.raw_sockets
allow.chflags
allow.mount
allow.mount.devfs
allow.mount.nullfs
allow.mount.procfs
allow.mount.zfs
allow.quotas
allow.socket_af

[20130608] FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE no longer supports FreeBSD CVS repository. Some documents mistakenly refer to RELENG_8_4_0_RELEASE as CVS tag for the release and RELENG_8_4 as CVS branch tag for the 8.4-RELEASE security branch. However, FreeBSD Project no longer supports FreeBSD CVS repository and 8.4-RELEASE has been released by using FreeBSD subversion repository instead. RELENG_8_4 corresponds to svn://svn.FreeBSD.org/base/releng/8.4, and RELENG_8_4_0_RELEASE corresponds to svn://svn.FreeBSD.org/base/release/8.4.0. Please note that FreeBSD source tree for 8.4-RELEASE and its security branch cannot be updated by using official CVSup servers.

[20130607] (removed about a bge(4) network interface driver issue because it was incorrect)

[20130606] The fxp(4) network interface driver may not work well with the dhclient(8) utility. More specifically, if the /etc/rc.conf has the following line:

ifconfig_fxp0="DHCP"

to activate a DHCP client to configure the network interface, the following notification messages are displayed and the dhclient(8) utility keeps trying to initialize the network interface forever.

kernel: fxp0: link state changed to UP
kernel: fxp0: link state changed to DOWN

A patch to fix this issue will be released as an Errata Notice.

[20130606] As described in FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE Release Notes, FreeBSD ZFS subsystem has been updated to support feature flags for ZFS pools. However, the default version number of a newly created ZFS pool is still 28.

This is because FreeBSD 9.0 and 9.1 do not support the feature flags. This means ZFS pools with feature flag support cannot be used on FreeBSD 9.0 and 9.1. An 8.X system with v28 ZFS pools can be upgraded to 9.X with no problem. Note that zfs(8) send and receive commands do not work between pools with different versions. Once a ZFS pool is upgraded from v28, there is no way to upgrade the system to FreeBSD 9.0 and 9.1. FreeBSD 9.2 and later will support ZFS pools with feature flags.

To create a ZFS pool with feature flag support, use the zpool(8) create command and then the zpool(8) upgrade command.