www.Lucq.org

OpenBSD patches

Introduction and disclaimer

This section of my site contains several patches for little problems I encountered in OpenBSD, as well as some enhancements to the base system. In order to use these patches, you should be familiar with how to patch and rebuild your kernel and your OpenBSD system. Please read the appropriate documentation if you don't know how to do this. If you have any remarks or questions, do drop me a note.

I cannot be held responsible for direct or indirect damage or any other consequence of using, or not using, or using incorrectly, the information presented on this page, or linked to from this page.

The patches

1. Tuning/configuration (enhancement)
2. i386 fdisk fix
3. 32-bit rcp fix
4. savecore fix
5. 32-bit vnd fix
6. 32-bit dump fix
7. dhcpd fix
8. execve fix
9. wdc debug fix
10. optional ptrace/acct (enhancement)
11. UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART fix
12. ddb.panic config (enhancement)
13. jftpgw fix (from the ports)
14. popa3d fix
15. openssl fix
16. arpwatch 2.1a11 fix

Tuning/configuration

These patches allow you to use the config(8) command to set some kernel parameters, instead of having to recompile the kernel when you want them to change. Currently the patch allows you to modify the NMBCLUSTERS value and the BUFCACHEPERCENT value. Once you have installed the patch and recompiled the system, use the new config(8) commands “nmbclust” and “cachepct”.

i386 fdisk fix

This patch fixes a typo in the fdisk program. This fix should solve a lot of disk set-up problems on i386.

32-bit rcp fix

This patch fixes a 32-bit related problem in rcp, which occurs when dealing with files that are larger than 2GB (on machines with a 32-bit integer type).

savecore fix

Since some time, the savecore command is not capable anymore of clearing the crash dump area reliable, i.e. every time you reboot the same crash dump gets saved again. Very annoying. This patch of libkvm fixes that.

32-bit vnd fix

vnd(4) and vnconfig(8) apparently also suffer from 32-bit woes (also see OpenBSD PR 1484). This patch fixes that.

32-bit dump fix

The 32-bit saga continues. Apparently dump/restore are also afflicted. The patch below attempts to remedy this problem.

dhcpd fix

OpenBSD 3.0 contains ISC DHCP 2.0, but apparently this version has a problem with e.g. option host-name in the configuration file. The problem appears to be related to some changes in the configuration file parser. The patch below attempts to address this problem.

execve fix

This is really, really minor, but according to the man-page, execve(2) should return EFAULT if argv is NULL, and not EINVAL as the current code does. At least, that's my interpretation... Anyway, this patch fixes that.

wdc debugging fix

Apparently the wdc(4) debugging code barfs at boot-up due to a page fault. This patch fixes the problem (which is due to a null pointer being dereferenced). Problem discovered while debugging RAIDframe code.

Optional ptrace/acct

This patch makes the ptrace(2) and the acct (per accton(8)) kernel subsystems optional. This allows for slightly smaller installation kernels to be built. Removing ptrace(2) might also be good for security, given recently discovered race conditions.

UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART fix

The UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART feature of the new extended attributes code does not work properly. The problem appears to be that the nodes are left in locked state following ufs_lookup. This patch fixes that.

Making ddb.panic config(8)-able

This patch allows you to change the hard-coded value for ddb.panic through config(8). This is actually a patch of limited usefullness, since sysctl(8) can also change this, and you can alter the value at boot time by invoking ddb(4) at the earliest possible time and change the value using the w command.

Beware: if you change the value to zero, and the kernel borks at boot time, you will end up in a continuous boot/reboot loop until you intervene at the console. You have been warned.

jftpgw fix (from the ports)

This patch lets the jftpgw port as shipped with OpenBSD 3.0 know about the EPRT and EPSV commands. The program will simply respond with “500 command not understood”. This prevents problems in the case where both the client and the actual server know about these commands, but jftpgw doesn't.

Create a directory /usr/ports/net/jftpgw/patches and place the two patch files in this directory.

popa3d fix

This patch lets popa3d as shipped with OpenBSD 3.2 use the pop3 port from the /etc/services file, as documented in popa3d(8). This allows you to let popa3d listen on a port other than the default (110) by altering this file.

OpenSSL fix

This patch fixes a memory reallocation problem in the OpenSSL shipped with OpenBSD 3.4. This problem was confirmed by levitte [at] openssl.org.

arpwatch 2.1a11 fix

This patch fixes a minor issue with arpwatch 2.1a11, where sendmail would log a "Filedescriptors missing on startup: stderr" warning every time a report was sent by arpwatch.