Upgrade to FreeBSD 8.0

Last week, I upgraded my FreeBSD 7.x system to FreeBSD-8.0.

For the system binaries, I used cvsup to update my source tree, then did "make buildworld; make buildkernel; make installkernel; mergemaster; make installworld" and rebooted. The system built without complaint. My kernel config, which is a slightly modified and stipped down GENERIC, didn't work out of the box. Rather than debugging my old conf file, I copied the 8.x GENERIC and re-tweaked it to fit my needs.

I rebuilt some of my ports, but I think that was mostly me getting up to date, rather than necessary for a functional system.

One of the non-trivial stumbling blocks I ran into was getting my WiFi card up and functioning. I spent some time searching the web for help, and didn't find the magic incantations I needed. However, reading man pages and with some luck, I now have a working system again.

In order to save someone else the complete recreation of my work, I thought I'd post the relevant bits of my /etc/rc.conf here. For reference, I have an open AP on the ath0 interface, and a normal Ethernet LAN connected to fxp0; I bridge these two nets together to make printing and stuff easier. I hope this helps, and recommend a good read of ifconfig(8) and wlan(4) [which is a new interface to me].

#############################################

#
# Sample fragment from /etc/rc.conf
#

ifconfig_rl0="DHCP" # Internet

###
#
# Bridge the internal networks
#
cloned_interfaces="bridge0"

# FreeBSD 7.x
# NOTE: This didn't exactly work as desired; I couldn't figure out how
# to assign an address to the bridge and make it come up in rc.conf
# (thus the two ifconfig_bridge0 lines).
# Once the system had booted, as a workaround I had a script run:
# # ifconfig bridge0 addm fxp0 addm ath0
#
# ifconfig_bridge0="addm fxp0 addm ath0 inet 192.168.42.254 up"
# ifconfig_fxp0="up"
# ifconfig_ath0="ssid PACEHOUSE channel 11 mode 11g mediaopt hostap"
# ifconfig_bridge0="inet 192.168.42.254 up"

# FreeBSD 8.x
ifconfig_bridge0="inet 192.168.42.254 addm fxp0 addm wlan0 up"
ifconfig_fxp0="up"
wlans_ath0="wlan0"
create_args_wlan0="wlanmode hostap"
ifconfig_wlan0="ssid PACEHOUSE channel 11 mode 11g up"

#############################################

A problem that I may not have resolved yet also has to do with networking. My ISP connection is Charter Cable through rl0, which gets its info via DHCP. In FreeBSD 7.x, things worked as expected. However, with 8.0, it appears that I'm not getting an address and routing info quick enough (or ???), so boot time ntpdate and other programs that do name resolution fail. This also seems to leave DNS in a wonky state, and natd not running. As a workaround, once the system is up, I restart those services. Luckily, things are stable enough to prevent this from being a crisis. I am hopeful that this will get fixed by the time I next rebuild. If you have ideas, please let me know!

Other than these hiccups, I am not having trouble with 8.0, and it has been completely stable and reliable once running. Go ahead, give it a try.