Rebuilding FreeBSD from sources

Hi All,

Got a bit of an interesting question. I figured I would start playing
around with my kernel a bit and try taking a couple of settings out
(settings relating to IPFilter cause I wanted to try module not kernel
loaded for a change). I have been running cvsup for a while and updating to
tag=RELENG_4, and updating all the ports, docs etc at the same time.

After making the changes to the kernel I rebuilt it, now things like top and
ps dont work giving me memory errors (bugger), not hardware error though. I
figured it had rebuilt the kernel from the new sources and I now need to
rebuild the rest of the stuff (make world etc or what its called, i've got
it all printed out here somewhere). How ever I have been trying to follow
the instructions from the FreeBSD handbook and I only get as far as the
mergermaster cause it says cant find /etc/make.conf and boots me out. So I
tried copying it from etc/defaults to /etc, and now it says :-

BDECFLAGS= -W -Wall -ansi -pedantic -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast-align \
* No example variable with this name

Can anyone tell me where to go from here or if I should have really done
this first then the kernel ?? I am prepared to wipe the machine and start
again if need be, however I still need to learn how to do this and there is
no time like the present !!

Thanks for your help,

Matt.

Hi Matt,

> After making the changes to the kernel I rebuilt it, now things like top and
> ps dont work giving me memory errors (bugger), not hardware error though. I
> figured it had rebuilt the kernel from the new sources and I now need to
> rebuild the rest of the stuff (make world etc or what its called, i've got
> it all printed out here somewhere). How ever I have been trying to follow
> the instructions from the FreeBSD handbook and I only get as far as the
> mergermaster cause it says cant find /etc/make.conf and boots me out. So I
> tried copying it from etc/defaults to /etc, and now it says :-
>
> BDECFLAGS= -W -Wall -ansi -pedantic -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast-align \
> * No example variable with this name
>
> Can anyone tell me where to go from here or if I should have really done
> this first then the kernel ?? I am prepared to wipe the machine and start
> again if need be, however I still need to learn how to do this and there is
> no time like the present !!

I think the following should bring your system in a sane again:

1.) Delete /etc/make.conf! You should _never_ copy something from
/etc/default to /etc or edit files in /etc/default. The files in
/etc/default are updated with the normal system update, and /etc/
contains only the differencens to the defaults that are specific for
your environment and needs.

I think, you should put the following into your /etc/make.conf, but an
empty /etc/make.conf should satisfy mergemaster, too.

MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE=ftp://<your closest freebsd mirror>/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/
CPUTYPE=<your cpu-type, see "man gcc">
CFLAGS=-O -pipe

# Documentation settings
DOC_LANG=en_US.ISO8859-1

2.) Delete /usr/obj + /usr/src/sys/compile/YOUR_KERNEL_HERE

3.) Start a buildworld+buildkernel procedure as described in
/usr/src/Makefile:

# 1. `cd /usr/src' (or to the directory containing your source tree).
# 2. `make buildworld'
# 3. `make buildkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE' (default is GENERIC).
# 4. `make installkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE' (default is GENERIC).
# 5. `reboot' (in single user mode: boot -s from the loader prompt).
# 6. `mergemaster -p'
# 7. `make installworld'
# 8. `mergemaster'
# 9. `reboot'

HTH,
Simon