The Ultimate BSD Thread™ - The Devil Wears a Neckbeard

roadhead · roadhead Dec 25, 2001

SamDabbers posted:

The import action takes into account that the disks may not have the same /dev nodes as they did when they were exported. The ZFS labels written to disk don't contain the /dev paths of the disks when the zpool was exported. They contain, among other metadata, the name/UUID of the zpool and the UUIDs of the other member disks. As long as all member disks are present in the system when you go to import the zpool, ZFS should be able to figure out the stripe order of the zpool from the labels.

I hate to say it, but it looks like your zpool is hosed.

This is what I get for using ZFS ported to a release candidate I guess

I booted into 8.0RC1 just after looking at it in Solaris to get that report, why are they of such vastly differing opinion as to the health of the individual drives in the array?

Adbot · # ? May 29, 2024 00:50

jandrese · # ? Nov 10, 2009 02:36

I don't know about zpools, but with some raid systems if the headers get messed up but the disks are still alright, you can get away with just tearing down and recreating the pools from scratch in exactly the same way they were set up before. Just be careful that the thing doesn't want to zero out the disks or something when remaking them.

I've done this before with the old vinum arrays and got away with it, but YMMV. If your data is lost you don't have anything to lose.

Does zpool store its data on the first sector of each disk like vinum? If so, you can save it with dd before trying this, and possibly even inspect it to see what the problem is. I have to say that the listing you gave earlier is a huge regression over what you used to get with "vinum list".

SamDabbers · # ? Nov 10, 2009 07:36

roadhead posted:

This is what I get for using ZFS ported to a release candidate I guess I booted into 8.0RC1 just after looking at it in Solaris to get that report, why are they of such vastly differing opinion as to the health of the individual drives in the array?

It looks like they both have the same opinion of the state of the zpool, but the OpenSolaris implementation (which is a few revisions ahead of the FreeBSD port) gives you more detail as to which drives contain corrupt data.

jandrese posted:

I don't know about zpools, but with some raid systems if the headers get messed up but the disks are still alright, you can get away with just tearing down and recreating the pools from scratch in exactly the same way they were set up before.

This won't work. According to the ZFS Administration Guide the only way to recover from this type of failure is to recreate the zpool and repopulate the data from a backup.

SamDabbers fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Nov 10, 2009

roadhead · roadhead Dec 25, 2001

SamDabbers posted:

It looks like they both have the same opinion of the state of the zpool, but the OpenSolaris implementation (which is a few revisions ahead of the FreeBSD port) gives you more detail as to which drives contain corrupt data.

This won't work. According to the ZFS Administration Guide the only way to recover from this type of failure is to recreate the zpool and repopulate the data from a backup.

I've resigned myself to building a new array and transferring those 3 TB back over the network again, but I really wish I had left the pool alone rather than exporting it

cest la vie.

w_hat · w_hat Jul 8, 2003

roadhead posted:

I've resigned myself to building a new array and transferring those 3 TB back over the network again, but I really wish I had left the pool alone rather than exporting it cest la vie.

I can't believe an export caused that. I'm definitely sticking with OpenSolaris now.

Excavation · # ? Nov 21, 2009 11:14

I have a small issue. I'm running FreeBSD 7.2 on one of my machines, and after periods of inactivity the wireless half-craps out. For instance, when I wake up in the morning and go to my computer like the nerd that I am, I can't even do so much as ping my router as a user, even though ifconfig says my wireless connection is up and associated.

The only thing that fixes it is pinging my router/any random website as the superuser. Once I do that, everything is fine and dandy until the next morning/indeterminate period of not touching the computer.

Is this a common problem? Is there something silly that I'm missing? It's no big problem, it just shits me a bit.

Edit: Also I can't ping it from other computers until I do my current solution.

Excavation fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Nov 21, 2009

jandrese · # ? Nov 21, 2009 18:20

The strangest thing is that ping is suid, so it is always run as root. That is a very odd issue indeed. I have no idea what the real solution is, but a workaround would seem to be to add an entry to root's crontab that looks something like:

*/5 * * * * /root/bin/wakeupcard

Then create said script like so:

code:

#!/bin/sh

ping -c 1 -q $myrouteripaddr > /dev/null

You could probably get even fancier and check to make sure your laptop is on your home network first and that the interface is up, but this should suffice for now. I would put the ping command in the crontab directly, but I'm always nervous about redirecting stdout on the lines in cron, and if you don't root will get mail every 5 minutes telling him his ping was successful.

muskrat · muskrat Aug 16, 2004

Coupon Wizard posted:

I have a small issue. I'm running FreeBSD 7.2 on one of my machines, and after periods of inactivity the wireless half-craps out. For instance, when I wake up in the morning and go to my computer like the nerd that I am, I can't even do so much as ping my router as a user, even though ifconfig says my wireless connection is up and associated.

The only thing that fixes it is pinging my router/any random website as the superuser. Once I do that, everything is fine and dandy until the next morning/indeterminate period of not touching the computer.

Is this a common problem? Is there something silly that I'm missing? It's no big problem, it just shits me a bit.

Edit: Also I can't ping it from other computers until I do my current solution.

This could obviously be specific to wireless (e.g., the driver/bug) but are you using a firewall of any kind?

Sounds like some issues I've seen when the firewall is keeping state (but incorrectly).

conntrack · # ? Nov 22, 2009 23:07

Coupon Wizard posted:

I have a small issue. I'm running FreeBSD 7.2 on one of my machines, and after periods of inactivity the wireless half-craps out. For instance, when I wake up in the morning and go to my computer like the nerd that I am, I can't even do so much as ping my router as a user, even though ifconfig says my wireless connection is up and associated.

The only thing that fixes it is pinging my router/any random website as the superuser. Once I do that, everything is fine and dandy until the next morning/indeterminate period of not touching the computer.

Is this a common problem? Is there something silly that I'm missing? It's no big problem, it just shits me a bit.

Edit: Also I can't ping it from other computers until I do my current solution.

check if you can disable powersaving for the device. Might be a clue to driver bugs.

Excavation · # ? Nov 23, 2009 10:45

Thanks for the advice guys! When I have some free time in the next few days I'll look into it properly.

jandrese, I tried the cron job, but either it doesn't work or more likely I hosed it up (I'm fairly wet around the ears when it comes to these things).

SmirkingJack · # ? Nov 23, 2009 17:01

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=8593

It sure would be nice if FreeBSD's release schedule was in any way shape or form reliable, or at least updated to reflect whatever the current time frame is estimated to be.

unknown · # ? Nov 23, 2009 17:56

Their engineering wiki was more accurate (but still inaccurate) with the release schedule, and generally said what was left in terms of bugs.

unknown fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Nov 23, 2009

ShizCakes · # ? Nov 23, 2009 23:47

Thanks for making this thread. I wanted to chime in with my moving to BSD trip report:

I'm not a *nix pro, by any means. I've tried a bunch of distributions of Linux - my first was Red Hat 7 or 8 (not RHEL), moving on to Fedora and Ubuntu and finally settling on CentOS - I generally only run Linux/BSD/Debian on servers, and use Windows or OSX as my workstation. It's a personal preference thing, I'm not much for OS wars nor blind loyalty to software and software companies.

Something about CentOS has bothered me lately. I took the time to set things up nice, brining in separate repositories and such, but I never can seem to find up-to-date software. I realize it's a philosophy thing, and that they backport security fixes, but of the Red Hat related offerings, Fedora is too fast and loose, and CentOS/RHEL is too slow. I had problems with the amount of time it would take to understand all the fancy user-friendly things Ubuntu does, in terms of making sure I don't trip over myself, and there were too many surprises.

Most of the above problems are really more of a user-level understanding thing than a serious problem with any of the distributions - they have their place.

Enter this thread. I read some comparison things on the internet, and the BSD for Linux users site linked in the OP was great for understanding the differences in core approaches and philosophies. I was enticed to try it out by the promise of a clean, low-on-surprises operating system.

My first foray with FreeBSD didn't go well. I got the clean, low-on-surprises OS that I was looking for, but I had unexpectedly been pampered by RPMs on CentOS that package comfortable configuration files as part of their installation. I did the work to get Lighttpd and Python serving some pages for a little personal project I was working on, but thought it to be difficult to have to configure vim and bash and all these things I had taken for granted on CentOS. I was also a little frustrated at the idea that BIND couldn't be (easily/simply) removed from the base install.

A few months later, I decided that I would give FreeBSD a shot for a Snort VM that I wanted to set up in my office. It was the perfect 'real' project to try FreeBSD out on - it wouldn't be publicly serving anything, and if I screwed it up beyond belief, oh well. My BIND concerns were assuaged with the understanding that the install also provided a bunch of client tools that I was used to, and of course, it didn't need to run if I didn't need it. In retrospect, it should have been more obvious, but I am sharing the view of a non-expert. I'm learning as I run across some of this stuff.

I've been very pleased with FreeBSD - I'm running 8.0-RELEASE (I started with RC2, updated to RC3, and because of a few posts back, just updated to RELEASE). As I've become more familiar with the ports tree, I've fallen so much in love with it. I didn't realize that it compiled them into packages that could be painlessly uninstalled - I thought it was like installing from source on a package-based Linux distribution and had been conditioned to believe that such an act was sacrilege.

The upgrade procedure from RC to RC and then to Release was painless.

I have a nice little home directory of configuration files for Bash and VIM, and a little shell script that runs through the motions of updating my installed applications (to be run manually). I came to the conclusion that installing a new box and getting the userland configured the way I wanted would be as simple as installing the relevant ports and copying my home directory - and that made me a lot more confident in the idea of using this OS in more places. In fact, because this adventure has led me to experiment more with options in things like `ls` - I'd never even read its man page - and now my little user environment is more comfortable than it would still be had I not broken out of my comfort zone of not-really-screwing-around with my Linux installs.

I like the idea of spending a (now that I get the lay of the land) relatively nominal amount of time adding things to the OS as I need them, rather than needing to strip out numerous auto-starting daemons.

For the first time, a Linux/BSD/Unix/whatever OS has made sense to me. So, thanks thread poster, for getting me started on this path. The documentation for FreeBSD is phenomenal, although there are some places that I found it lacking in specifics. I should get around to suggesting some mild improvements, actually. (ie; I had to find freebsd-update, it's not actually mentioned in the FreeBSD docs in the relevant section)

TL;DR: Guy tries FreeBSD, likes the BSD philosophy better than the philosophies of the Linux Distributions he's tried, is happy.

ShizCakes fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Nov 23, 2009

Bob Morales · # ? Nov 24, 2009 21:16

8.0 is hitting the FTP sites today, they should be making an official announcement soon.

JHVH-1 · JHVH-1 Jun 28, 2002

Bob Morales posted:

8.0 is hitting the FTP sites today, they should be making an official announcement soon.

Interesting... 8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img 996.3M
Never seen that type of image before.

Bob Morales · # ? Nov 25, 2009 05:36

http://torrents.freebsd.org:8080/

porkface · porkface Dec 29, 2000

Smooth upgrade path from 4.5.2 here, right?

falz · # ? Nov 25, 2009 15:04

porkface posted:

Smooth upgrade path from 4.5.2 here, right?

Can't tell if this is a joke post, but upgrades from 4 are not smooth. 5 and up are.

porkface · porkface Dec 29, 2000

falz posted:

Can't tell if this is a joke post, but upgrades from 4 are not smooth. 5 and up are.

I have a busted 5.2.1 RC system I've been using for years to run a vinum RAID 5 volume among other home services. It gets stuck for 20 minutes when booting due to some bug in this particular RC, so it's a pain every time the power goes out since it's my home router.

Is there any support for old vinum raid 5 volumes in the gvinum system to where I could possibly upgrade to FreeBSD 8? Or am I stuck at 5.3?

How well might I expect 8 to run on an old Celeron 733 with only 512 MB of RAM?

porkface fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Nov 25, 2009

jandrese · # ? Nov 25, 2009 19:25

8 should run just fine on that old Celery, you have more than enough memory for it and the FreeBSD kernel has never been a big cycle hog.

The problem with gvinum is that the RAID stuff never worked right. You could get away with just mirroring and striping, but anything beyond that was hopeless. The old Vinum code is gone as well, so you're kinda boned there. ZFS isn't ready for prime time yet either (I wouldn't trust a volume to it that I didn't have well backed up and that I wouldn't mind rebuilding every now and again).

Your only real upgrade option if you want to go to 8 is to get a supported RAID controller and dump the software RAID entirely. Granted, for a lot of cheap RAID controllers, you're basically still doing software RAID, and with configuration tools that aren't as well designed as Vinum, but it is what you're stuck with. 3ware RAID cards are pretty well support and not crazy expensive (but not cheap either). HighPoint's RAID cards are cheap, but are also pretty crappy (see previous comment about keeping good backups).

equation groupie · # ? Nov 26, 2009 02:05

Does anyone have rtorrent with XML-RPC support working on FreeBSD, perchance? It's giving me a big loving headache. (XML-RPC support is required for use with any of those rtorrent web frontends like rtgui or wTorrent, which is why I want it to work.

I'm running FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE-p2, and then all of the following installed from ports: xmlrpc-c-devel, libtorrent-devel, rtorrent-devel, apache22, mod_scgi, rtgui.

rtorrent is working great, no problems, etc. I have added the line scgi_port = 127.0.0.1:5000 to .rtorrent.rc. Now, when I start up rtorrent, it tells me XMLRPC initiated with 517 functions. Cool.
I also have a working installation of apache that serves things. I load the scgi module at the top of httpd.conf, and then I add this line to the right section later on: SCGIMount "/RPC2" 127.0.0.1:5000
Now, after I restart apache, I get this line in the error log once every few seconds: [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: /usr/local/www/htdoc/default/RPC2
When I load up the rtgui page in my web browser, it gives a generic "Can't connect to rtorrent :(" message.
I tried to use the xmlrpc command line binary to connect and execute the system.listMethods function as a test, (see rtorrent's wiki page on XML-RPC for details), but it gives this error: Failed. Call failed. HTTP response code is 404, not 200. (XML-RPC fault code -504)

I don't understand the Apache error, and googling it (of course replacing "/usr/local/www/htdoc/default" with an asterisk) brings up a tiny handful of results, with no resolution I could find.

If someone else has gotten a web GUI for rtorrent like rtgui, wtorrent, or any of the others working, and wouldn't mind outlining how they got it to work, or if anyone has any insight at all, I would appreciate it very much. Thanks.

Sergeant Hobo · # ? Nov 26, 2009 02:27

vlack posted:

rtorrent frontend troubles

I tried to do this a while ago too. For some reason, I wasn't able to get the SCGI module loaded in Apache. If I get some time this weekend, I think I'll have another go at it, since I don't think I'll be moving away from Screen + rTorrent anytime soon.

EnergizerFellow · # ? Nov 27, 2009 21:57

Cross-post from the NAS/Storage Megathread...

EnergizerFellow posted:

FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE is now out with ZFS support no longer officially in experimental status. 8.0-RELEASE also adds experimental support for ATA/SATA/AHCI-compliant devices in the CAM SCSI subsystem. You will need a custom kernel for this support.

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.0R/relnotes-detailed.html

Speaking of custom kernels, FreeBSD now has support for various 4-port SATA and mixed SATA/EIDE Marvell disk controllers, including the PCIe 88SX7042 [all(?) native PCIe 4-port SATA controllers currently on the market, including Rosewill RC-218, Adaptec AAR-1430SA, HighPoint RocketRAID 2300/2310]. The code didn't make 8.0-RELEASE, but you can grab the needed driver source from 8.0-STABLE.

http://gitorious.org/freebsd/freebsd/commit/1d6108e541b28ee68d9bad43a5be780bbb5447d7
http://gitorious.org/freebsd/freebsd/commit/053996b868e9512397df6f7b31dce66a8b2c712a

Bob Morales · # ? Nov 28, 2009 00:02

Who's using dual monitors with FreeBSD? I am thinking about switching my workstation over from Linux.

64-bit or 32-bit? NVIDIA or AMD?

I plan on running a pair of 24" at 1920x1200 or whatever the max is.

jandrese · # ? Nov 28, 2009 01:55

I'm running dual monitors right now. They're not even set at the same resolution. I'm using the nVidia binary blob drivers, but it should work with most cards since the dual screen stuff is an X extension, not an nVidia one.

Only Shallow · # ? Dec 2, 2009 06:19

http://lists.grok.org.uk/pipermail/full-disclosure/2009-November/071686.html posted:

There is an unbelievable simple local r00t bug in recent FreeBSD versions.
I audited FreeBSD for local r00t bugs a long time *sigh*. Now it pays out.

The bug resides in the Run-Time Link-Editor (rtld).
Normally rtld does not allow dangerous environment variables like LD_PRELOAD
to be set when executing setugid binaries like "ping" or "su".
With a rather simple technique rtld can be tricked into
accepting LD variables even on setugid binaries.
See the attached exploit for details.

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=0+0+current/freebsd-announce posted:

Hi all,

A short time ago a "local root" exploit was posted to the full-disclosure
mailing list; as the name suggests, this allows a local user to execute
arbitrary code as root.

Normally it is the policy of the FreeBSD Security Team to not publicly
discuss security issues until an advisory is ready, but in this case
since exploit code is already widely available I want to make a patch
available ASAP. Due to the short timeline, it is possible that this
patch will not be the final version which is provided when an advisory
is sent out; it is even possible (although highly doubtful) that this
patch does not fully fix the issue or introduces new issues -- in short,
use at your own risk (even more than usual).

The patch is at
http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/rtld.patch
and has SHA256 hash
ffcba0c20335dd83e9ac0d0e920faf5b4aedf366ee5a41f548b95027e3b770c1

I expect a full security advisory concerning this issue will go out on
Wednesday December 2nd.

Dijkstracula · # ? Dec 2, 2009 09:23

jnr posted:

~~Word on the street from friends who are patching and recompiling is that the patch doesn't stop the exploit...~~ False alarm.

Dijkstracula fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Dec 2, 2009

JHVH-1 · JHVH-1 Jun 28, 2002

The original post said:
FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE *** VULNERABLE
FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE *** VULNERABLE
FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE *** NOT VULN
FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE *** NOT VULN

I am assuming 7.2 and 6.4 are at risk as well? If it was an 8.0 only thing it wouldn't be too bad cause none of our customers have upgraded yet.

Any more info/discussion to be linked to?

Bob Morales · # ? Dec 2, 2009 16:26

JHVH-1 posted:

The original post said:
FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE *** VULNERABLE
FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE *** VULNERABLE
FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE *** NOT VULN
FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE *** NOT VULN

I am assuming 7.2 and 6.4 are at risk as well? If it was an 8.0 only thing it wouldn't be too bad cause none of our customers have upgraded yet.

Any more info/discussion to be linked to?

Someone posted on FreeBSD Forums that it applies to all 7 and 8 versions

Only Shallow · # ? Dec 3, 2009 18:33

Looks like the official fix is available for RELENG_8, at least.

/usr/src/UPDATING posted:

20091203:
p1 FreeBSD-SA-09:15.ssl, FreeBSD-SA-09:16.rtld,
FreeBSD-SA-09:17.freebsd-update
Disable SSL renegotiation in order to protect against a serious
protocol flaw. [09:15]

Correctly handle failures from unsetenv resulting from a corrupt
environment in rtld-elf. [09:16]

Fix permissions in freebsd-update in order to prevent leakage of
sensitive files. [09:17]

ShizCakes · # ? Dec 3, 2009 18:41

jnr posted:

Looks like the official fix is available for RELENG_8, at least.

code:

The following files will be updated as part of updating to 8.0-RELEASE-p1:
/etc/mtree/BSD.var.dist
/libexec/ld-elf.so.1
/usr/lib/libssl.a
/usr/lib/libssl.so.6
/usr/sbin/freebsd-update
/var/db/freebsd-update
/var/db/mergemaster.mtree

[root@ids ~]# freebsd-update install
Installing updates... done.

Only Shallow · # ? Dec 3, 2009 19:12

In other news, NVidia released a beta driver for FreeBSD amd64, and it only took about five years!

I'm going to try it out as soon as 8.0-p1 is done building.

jandrese · # ? Dec 3, 2009 20:33

jnr posted:

In other news, NVidia released a beta driver for FreeBSD amd64, and it only took about five years!

I'm going to try it out as soon as 8.0-p1 is done building.

Imagine that, the FreeBSD team implements the features the nVidia folks say they need to implement the driver, and bam, the driver comes out.

Only Shallow · # ? Dec 3, 2009 21:49

I wasn't trying to sound unappreciative. It's nice to have acceleration again.

SamDabbers · # ? Dec 3, 2009 21:50

jandrese posted:

Imagine that, the FreeBSD team implements the features the nVidia folks say they need to implement the driver, and bam, the driver comes out.

These are indeed exciting times for the BSD community

equation groupie · # ? Dec 4, 2009 06:00

Sergeant Hobo posted:

I tried to do this a while ago too. For some reason, I wasn't able to get the SCGI module loaded in Apache. If I get some time this weekend, I think I'll have another go at it, since I don't think I'll be moving away from Screen + rTorrent anytime soon.

Did you ever make this work? I got loving nothing.

Fake edit: Meant to say: I get no error message saying that mod_scgi didn't load or anything like that, just "File does not exist: /usr/local/www/htdoc/default/RPC2" every five seconds.

Sergeant Hobo · # ? Dec 4, 2009 13:41

vlack posted:

Did you ever make this work? I got loving nothing.

Fake edit: Meant to say: I get no error message saying that mod_scgi didn't load or anything like that, just "File does not exist: /usr/local/www/htdoc/default/RPC2" every five seconds.

Haven't had time to try it, sadly. Getting ready to transition to a new job can suck away all the free time you have.

EDIT: What I really should do, if I get a large chunk of time, is reinstall Apache under a jail. I'll see about getting MOD_SCGI working first.

Sergeant Hobo fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Dec 4, 2009

roadhead · # ? Dec 8, 2009 15:19

Just got one of these to replace a 16 GB CF card and one of these - after my first CF to IDE adapter BLEW OUT A TRACE on the PCB.

The Transcend SSD is here, but I haven't used it yet as after putting my CF card in the new adapter, FreeBSD 8.0 kept on trucking, and the array was unphased - pretty amazing considering the hard-drive with the OPERATING SYSTEM on it essentially disappeared out from under it, causing a dirty shutdown once I noticed its LED's were off, though both my SSH sessions had already become unresponsive and it would no longer respond to a ping.

Can I add the Transcend SSD with the 16GB CF drive in some sort of strange Raid-1 - half the 32 gig SSD in the RAID and half un-used or formatted for swap?

lazer_chicken · # ? Dec 26, 2009 05:07

I've got a hardware question for you OpenBSD folks. I use an OpenBSD machine as the router/gateway at my house. It's always served me well. Here's the important bits of the hardware:

Asus A7V600-X (via kt600/8237)
Athlon XP 2000+
1.5GB ram
onboard via rhine nic + Intel Pro 100

I recently upgraded the system to 4.6, and now none of my pci slots work. No devices work in any of them. Since that leaves me with only one nic, the router is pretty worthless. I've tried two other nics in place of the intel (some generic one using the dc driver and another via rhine), in every slot, and no dice. Has anyone ever seen this, or know how to fix it? I understand that its likely just some compatibility issue with the hardware and I'm probably SOL, but it just seems so strange that it would happen on such commonplace hardware. athlon xp/via chipset machines are a dime a dozen.

I popped a spare hard drive in and loaded it with win server 2k3 so at least my internet is still up, but I really want to get the box back into its native habitat.

Oh, and I thought it may have been some problem with the upgrade so I also tried a clean install of 4.6, with no success. I suppose I could just migrate the machine to linux (which I use for my laptop and desktop), but I prefer BSD on the gateway.

Adbot · # ? May 29, 2024 00:50

Cpt.Wacky · # ? Dec 26, 2009 05:19

lazer_chicken posted:

I've got a hardware question for you OpenBSD folks. I use an OpenBSD machine as the router/gateway at my house. It's always served me well. Here's the important bits of the hardware:

Asus A7V600-X (via kt600/8237)
Athlon XP 2000+
1.5GB ram
onboard via rhine nic + Intel Pro 100

I recently upgraded the system to 4.6, and now none of my pci slots work. No devices work in any of them. Since that leaves me with only one nic, the router is pretty worthless. I've tried two other nics in place of the intel (some generic one using the dc driver and another via rhine), in every slot, and no dice. Has anyone ever seen this, or know how to fix it? I understand that its likely just some compatibility issue with the hardware and I'm probably SOL, but it just seems so strange that it would happen on such commonplace hardware. athlon xp/via chipset machines are a dime a dozen.

I popped a spare hard drive in and loaded it with win server 2k3 so at least my internet is still up, but I really want to get the box back into its native habitat.

Oh, and I thought it may have been some problem with the upgrade so I also tried a clean install of 4.6, with no success. I suppose I could just migrate the machine to linux (which I use for my laptop and desktop), but I prefer BSD on the gateway.

Try disabling acpi: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#BootConfig