cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha support.s src/sys/i386/i386 swtch.s src/sys/kern kern_shutdown.c src/sys/sys systm.h

[Nate Lawson]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 05:04:12PM -0800, Nate Lawson wrote:
> > I would have gotten 100x more value from making options DDB the default in
> > GENERIC (at least until we branch -stable) and having all page faults
> > generate a backtrace.  This is a 1 line change that would save hours, not
> > minutes, of roundtrip email.  Look at reports of panics in the
> > freebsd-current@ archives and see how many result in a request for a
> > backtrace.
>
> Yes, please!  GNATS is also full of useless PRs that tie up committer
> resources in trying to extract meaningful debugging from the
> submitter.  This would be a huge step towards reducing the number of
> bugs in 5.x.

I just looked and GENERIC still has options DDB (and INVARIANTS, etc.)
So all we need is re@ to leave options DDB on for the release builds.  It
adds little space and users can compile it out.  But for "panic on
install" problems or novice users, this would be very useful.  Also,
having re@ provide a kernel.debug for each GENERIC would be good too.  It
could be on the live FS cd, not on cd1.

-Nate