With the advent of topaz, I had a reasonably fast machine to complement the slow machines crimson and chrome. With this I could use the FreeBSD handbook-described technique on Tracking for Multiple Machines.
My first attempt, using the upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2 as the target, was not entirely successful.
First, I build the world and kernel (GENERIC) for topaz and
installed without problem. Next, I copied the config files for
crimson and chrome to topaz, then built the kernels to match these
configs. However, I noticed it was building everything, not the
pared-down kernels I needed. Ah, I had forgotten to use the
/etc/make.conf file to match the kernel configs. I copied
these to topaz and used them to make the kernels e.g.:
make buildkernel KERNCONF=CRIMSON __MAKE_CONF=/path/to/CRIMSON/make.conf
[Sharp-eyed readers may have already noticed my error at this point.]
I then proceeded to NFS mount topaz:/usr/src and topaz:/usr/obj over
the chrome equivalents. I dropped chrome to single user mode, via
shutdown now, and ran mergemaster -p. I noticed
the following message:
Unable to find mtree database. Skipping auto-upgrade.
I'd never seen this message from mergemaster before, but decided to
ingore it and proceed with the install of the kernel and world. On
running the post-install mergemaster, I noticed the same
error message, but everything appeared to proceed as normal.
I rebooted into multiuser mode. Everything seemed fine, until I
tried to login in. Login told me that pam_unix.so could
not be found. The first signs of panic began to set in. This
occured for every login id I tried. This was not good. Panic level
increased. I rebooted into single user mode and took a look at
/etc/pam.d and /usr/lib where the pam_ files are
located. Nope, everything looked fine. Panic level was now
dangerously high...
I thought for a time that the problem had something to do with the
mtree message from mergemaster, and some config file was mangled.
However, I then remembered that I had built the kernel and world
with different make.conf settings. I rebuilt the world on
topaz using the same make.conf as the kernel, and tried
another installworld. Following this, to my relief, on reboot into
multi-user mode login worked properly. Lesson learned.
Afterwards, I discovered that the mtree message from
mergemaster is new in 6.2 (so I must have seen it when I
installed topaz, but had memory loss soon after). There is a new
auto-upgrade feature (invoked via the -U flag), which uses a mtree
database located in /var/db/mergemaster.mtree. When moving from
6.1, the mtree file does not exist, but the 6.2 mergemaster
creates it at the end of the first run. The auto-upgrade feature
looks useful, so I'll give it a try when I next upgrade. Almost
worth the red herring it provided!
I was bitten by this again today. Since crimson's
transubstantiation into a much
faster body, it is now used as the FreeBSD build machine, then
installing the kernel and world on topaz using NFS. Some
months ago, I changed the /etc/src.conf file (which is
where the WITHOUT_ knobs were moved in 7.0) to include NIS in the
build, as I didn't want to bother with having to change the default
settings in /etc/nsswitch.conf (to remove NIS) when
upgrading. If you don't make this change in nsswitch.conf,
when NIS is not built various error messages are emitted related to
NSSWITCH, e.g.
Mar 1 18:00:00 chrome cron[2184]: NSSWITCH(nss_method_lookup): nis, group_compa t, endgrent, not found
Naturally, I forgot to propagate this change to the topaz version
of /etc/src.conf. What should have been a simple upgrade
to 8.1-p2 became slightly panicky, as I witnessed the following
message when attempting to login:
topaz login: in openpam_load_module(): no pam_unix.so found topaz login: pam_start(): system error
After some poking around and re-reading this article, I finally
remembered/realised what I'd done. Changing /etc/src.conf
on topaz to match the build machine and re-performing the make
installworld step in single-user mode was sufficient to get
login working again.
