FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE Errata

FreeBSD/i386 10.1-RELEASE running as a guest operating system on VirtualBox can have a problem with disk I/O access. It depends on some specific hardware configuration and does not depend on a specific version of VirtualBox or host operating system.

It causes various errors and makes FreeBSD quite unstable. Although the cause is still unclear, disabling unmapped I/O works as a workaround. To disable it, choose Escape to loader prompt in the boot menu and enter the following lines from loader(8) prompt, after an OK:

set vfs.unmapped_buf_allowed=0
boot

Note that the following line has to be added to /boot/loader.conf after a boot. It disables unmapped I/O at every boot:

vfs.unmapped_buf_allowed=0

[2014-04-03 update] It has been reported that instability may be present on virtual machines running on other hypervisors, such as Xen or KVM.

FreeBSD/i386�10.1-RELEASE configured with a multi-disk ZFS dataset (mirror, raidz1, raidz2, raidz3) may crash during boot when the ZFS pool mount is attempted while booting an unmodified GENERIC kernel.

As described in /usr/src/UPDATING entry 20121223, rebuilding the kernel with options KSTACK_PAGES=4 has been observed to resolve the boot-time crash. This, however, is not an ideal solution for inclusion in the GENERIC kernel configuration, as increasing KSTACK_PAGES implicitly decreases available usermode threads in an environment that is already resource-starved.

Taking into account the heavy resource requirements of ZFS, in addition to the i386-specific tuning requirements for general workloads, using ZFS with the FreeBSD/i386�GENERIC kernel is strongly discouraged.

Due to an incompatibility between bsdconfig(8) and pkg(8)�version 1.3, packages included on the FreeBSD�dvd installer will not be recognized by bsdconfig(8).

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create the /dist target directory, and manually mount the dvd1.iso ISO:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, set REPOS_DIR to the path of the repos/ directory within the installer so pkg(8) will use the correct repository metadata.

If using sh(1):

# export REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos

If using csh(1):

# setenv REPOS_DIR /dist/packages/repos

Finally, bootstrap pkg(8) from the ISO, and install required packages:

# pkg bootstrap
# pkg install xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

[2015-02-06] Affects binary upgrade users: The second phase of freebsd-update install, the phase where the running userland is upgraded, fails on systems deployed with nss_ldap enabled in nsswitch.conf(5) when upgrading from 10.0-RELEASE to 10.1-RELEASE.

A workaround is to disable nss_ldap in nsswitch.conf(5) prior to running freebsd-update install to upgrade the userland, after which it can be enabled again when the upgrade process is completed.

The problem is being investigated, and an Errata Notice is expected to be issued when a solution to the problem is identified.

[2015-03-31] Several reports were received regarding the QCOW2 FreeBSD�virtual machine images crashing on boot. As result of this, these images have been removed from the FTP mirrors, and the hashes removed from CHECKSUM.SHA256 and CHECKSUM.MD5 in the VM-IMAGES/ directory on the FTP mirrors.