[jggimi]

By jggimi
Special Report to the OpenBSD Times
All the news that gives us fits.

KITCHEN TABLE, 2300 LOCAL TIME, 30 JUNE 2008 -- The laptop sputtered, and hummed, but the well-known Internet browser, FireFox 3, refused to start. "Segfaulted again," mumbled the laptop's user, who asked that his identity not be revealed. "Why? All I did was upgrade to yesterday's snapshot. I haven't touched a package. Thunderbird has been hanging all week, too, and that didn't change."

It is not known how many -current users have been experimenting with the development version of the OpenBSD port of FireFox. What is known is that this wildly popular application requires a great deal of supporting mozilla infrastructure, such as XUL, NSS, and NSPR. The relationships between them are too complex to describe simply as, "dependent."

A self-described work-in-progress, the FireFox 3 port and some related dependent ports have been available from mailing list archives for several weeks. They remain uncommitted to the tree. But the allure is undeniable. "FF3 is so shiny and new," said the laptop's user, "I absolutely had to have it right away. It worked for about ten days, and that was great. Then it suddenly stopped last night. Right after I upgraded. I wonder why?"

Interviewing this laptop user, I learned that he, like many -current users, take advantage of "snapshot packages." These are tools of convenience that are not guaranteed to work, or even install, as they are not synchronized with any particular snapshot. The Following -current FAQ does not discuss them; the formal method to ensure synchronization is to build all 3rd party packages from a synchronized ports tree. But the snapshot packages work ... most of the time.

The laptop user described a diagnosis and resolution which took another 24 hours. "I think it was xulrunner. I ran gdb with thunderbird-bin, and saw segfaults there which didn't appear on console or in core files. So I rebuilt xulrunner, and then spent a few hours rebuilding t-bird and FF ports too."

Did he learn anything? He says, "When I install the next snap, I'll probably have to rebuild these again. But I'll have to wait and see."