Testing a new kernel
Joshua Lokken
joshualokken at attbi.com
Wed Apr 9 09:03:31 PDT 2003
* James Long (list at museum.rain.com) wrote:
==> > After the buildworld/buildkernel/installkernel procedure, it is recommended
==> > to reboot the new kernel to ensure that it is proper. What should one do
==> > to properly 'test' a kernel? Is it enough to reboot it and login? Thanks.
==>
==> That's a good question, and I don't know for sure. Mr. Chen says that
==> he thinks that's sufficient. Personally, I like to manually configure
==> the network card with ifconfig (or dhclient if the system is a DHCP
==> client), then do some traceroutes to "distant" systems, ones that are
==> 10-20 hops away, which exercises the network stack, and also, the
==> resolver (which maps names to and from IP addrs), since it has to do
==> a reverse lookup on each hop.
Has anything ever not worked for you after the kernel install?
==>
==> One of the _first_ things I do after booting the new kernel into
==> single-user mode:
==>
==> adjkerntz -i (load the timezone adjuster)
==> fsck -p (check all the filesystems)
I always do these things when going into single-user, but when I've 'tested'
my new kernel, I've been booting into multi-user, logging in, and then re-
booting back into single-user.
==>
==> I basically just try to "flex" the major muscles of the system:
==> file system, network stack, etc.
This makes sense.
=>
==> I'm no expert, but just keep in mind that at this stage, it seems
==> possible that if any device nodes (/dev/ entries) are out of date
==> with the new kernel, you might have hardware issues with those
==> devices until you installworld and MAKEDEV all to regenerate the
==> /dev/ entries. I hear that FreeBSD 5.0 will have a revised
==> device system, so things may change when you move to 5.0.
==>
==> Jim
==>
Yeah, five's a bit beyond for me right now, but 4 stable sure rocks! Thanks.
--
Joshua
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