kgzip(1) is broken

[Ian Lepore]

On Tue, 2013-01-15 at 16:10 -0800, Devin Teske wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Devin Teske [mailto:devin.teske at fisglobal.com] On Behalf Of
> > dteske at freebsd.org
> > Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 3:10 PM
> > To: 'Ian Lepore'
> > Cc: freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org; dteske at freebsd.org
> > Subject: RE: kgzip(1) is broken
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Ian Lepore [mailto:freebsd at damnhippie.dyndns.org]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 3:05 PM
> > > To: dteske at freebsd.org
> > > Cc: freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org
> > > Subject: Re: kgzip(1) is broken
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2013-01-15 at 13:27 -0800, dteske at freebsd.org wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I have been sad of-late because kgzip(1) no longer produces a usable
> kernel.
> > > >
> > > > All versions of 9.x suffer this.
> > > >
> > > > And somewhere between 8.3-RELEASE-p1 and 8.3-RELEASE-p5 this recently
> > > broke in
> > > > the 8.x series.
> > > >
> > > > I haven't tried the 7 series lately, but if whatever is making the rounds
> > gets
> > > > MFC'd that far back, I expect the problem to percolate there too.
> > > >
> > > > The symptom is that the machine reboots immediately and unexpectedly the
> > > moment
> > > > the kernel is executed by the loader.
> > > >
> > > > This is quite troubling and I am looking for someone to help find the
> > culprit. I
> > > > don't know where to start looking.
> > >
> > > Here are some possible candidates from the things that were MFC'd to 8
> > > in that timeframe.  I haven't looked at what these do, they're just
> > > changes that affect files related to booting.
> > >
> > > r233211
> > > r233377
> > > r233469
> > > r234563
> > >
> > 
> > Thanks Ian!
> > 
> > I'll test each one individually to see if regressing any one (or all)
> addresses
> > the problem.
> 
> Progress...
> 
> Looks like I found the culprit.
> 
> Turns out it's a back-ported bxe(4) driver (back-ported from 9 -- where kgzip
> seems to never work).
> 
> I wonder why back-porting bxe(4) from stable/9 to releng/8.3 would cause kgzip
> to produce non-working kernels.
> 

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how a device driver can lead to "the
machine reboots immediately and unexpectedly the moment the kernel is
executed by the loader," which I took to mean "before seeing the
copyright or anything."

> I'm emailing the maintainers (davidch + other Broadcom folk)

-- Ian