STABLE branches occasionally have bugs or incompatibilities which might affect users, although these are typically fixed quickly. The latest unreleased development version of FreeBSD.

Determine which version of FreeBSD is being used with uname 1 :. That path is used when checking out the source:. The world , or all of the operating system except the kernel, is compiled. This is done first to provide up-to-date tools to build the kernel.

Then the kernel itself is built:. This can speed up later builds by avoiding recompiling code that has not changed. To force a clean rebuild of everything, use cleanworld before starting a build:. Increasing the number of build jobs on multi-core processors can improve build speed.

Determine the number of cores with sysctl hw. Processors vary, as do the build systems used with different versions of FreeBSD, so testing is the only sure method to tell how a different number of jobs affects the build speed. For a starting point, consider values between half and double the number of cores. The number of jobs is specified with -j. A buildworld must be completed if the source code has changed.

After that, a buildkernel to build a kernel can be run at any time. To build just the kernel:. Sometimes it is useful or necessary to build a custom kernel, adding or removing device drivers or options to fit a specific need.

For example, someone developing a small embedded computer with severely limited RAM could remove unneeded device drivers or options to make the kernel slightly smaller. Link the kernel config file into the conf directory. If that directory is deleted or overwritten, the kernel config can be re-linked into the new one. After the buildworld and buildkernel steps have been completed, the new kernel and world are installed:.

A few final tasks complete the update. Any modified configuration files are merged with the new versions, outdated libraries are located and removed, then the system is restarted. It manages updates by doing a three-way merge of changes made to these files against the local versions.

It is also designed to minimize the amount of user intervention, in contrast to mergemaster 8 's interactive prompts. In general, etcupdate 8 does not need any specific arguments for its job. There is however a handy in between command for sanity checking what will be done the first time etcupdate 8 is used:.

If etcupdate 8 is not able to merge a file automatically, the merge conflicts can be resolved with manual interaction by issuing:. When switching from mergemaster 8 to etcupdate 8 , the first run might merge changes incorrectly generating spurious conflicts. To prevent this, perform the following steps before updating sources and building the new world:. If a file must be manually merged, an interactive display allows the user to choose which portions of the files are kept.

See mergemaster 8 for more information. Programs which were still using those old libraries will stop working when the library has been deleted. These programs must be rebuilt or replaced after deleting the old libraries. When multiple machines need to track the same source tree, it is a waste of disk space, network bandwidth, and CPU cycles to have each system download the sources and rebuild everything. The solution is to have one machine do most of the work, while the rest of the machines mount that work via NFS.

This section outlines a method of doing so. First, identify a set of machines which will run the same set of binaries, known as a build set. Each machine can have a custom kernel, but will run the same userland binaries. From that set, choose a machine to be the build machine that the world and kernel are built on. Ideally, this is a fast machine that has sufficient spare CPU to run make buildworld and make buildkernel.

Select a machine to be the test machine , which will test software updates before they are put into production. This must be a machine that can afford to be down for an extended period of time. It can be the build machine, but need not be.

That means that the build machine must build all the parts of the base system that any machine in the build set is going to install. On the build machine, build the kernel and world as described in Updating FreeBSD from Source , but do not install anything on the build machine.

Instead, install the built kernel on the test machine. Then, run shutdown now to go to single-user mode in order to install the new kernel and world and run mergemaster as usual. When done, reboot to return to normal multi-user operations. After verifying that everything on the test machine is working properly, use the same procedure to install the new software on each of the other machines in the build set.

The same methodology can be used for the ports tree. Book menu. Table of Contents Synopsis FreeBSD Update Updating the Documentation Set Tracking a Development Branch Tracking for Multiple Machines. Synopsis FreeBSD is under constant development between releases. How to compare the state of an installed system against a known pristine copy. How to keep the installed documentation up-to-date with Git or documentation ports. How to rebuild and reinstall the entire base system.

FreeBSD Update Applying security patches in a timely manner and upgrading to a newer release of an operating system are important aspects of ongoing system administration. The Configuration File The default configuration file for freebsd-update works as-is. Components of the base system which should be kept updated. Components world kernel. Paths which start with anything matching an entry in an IgnorePaths statement will be ignored.

Paths which start with anything matching an entry in an UpdateIfUnmodified statement will only be updated if the contents of the file have not been modified by the user unless changes are merged; see below. When upgrading to a new FreeBSD release, files which match MergeChanges will have any local changes merged into the version from the new release. StrictComponents no.

Applying Security Patches The process of applying FreeBSD security patches has been simplified, allowing an administrator to keep a system fully patched using freebsd-update. The following command, when run on a FreeBSD 9. Looking up update. Fetching metadata signature for 9. Fetching metadata index Inspecting system When using a custom kernel, the above step will produce a warning similar to the following:.

Upgrading Packages After a Major Version Upgrade Generally, installed applications will continue to work without problems after minor version upgrades. A rebuild of all installed applications can be accomplished with this command:. Reboot the machine into the new FreeBSD version. The upgrade process is now complete.

To begin the comparison, specify the output file to save the results to:. Once installed, use git to fetch a clean copy of the documentation source:. Members of the FreeBSD community who are actively working on some part of the source tree. The N-number When tracking down bugs it is important to know which versions of the source code have been used to create the system exhibiting an issue.

Local branches will have n-numbers that will overlap commits of their parent branch. It is absent in this example because the FRED kernel was built from a pristine checkout. Afterwards the new files to be added for the FreeBSD The following files will be added as part of updating to Almost finally the list of files that will be updated makes its appearance. Finally the system has all the new files and it is now time to perform the install.

As shown on the prompt we proceed with the upgrade. Installing updates…. Once finished the system will let us know and will ask for a reboot and a new action to finish with the installation of the upgrade.

Kernel updates have been installed. Please reboot and run. After rebooting we can effectively check we are booted into a FreeBSD 12 version system. And when the upgrade finishes succesfully one is granted with the following message. Completing this upgrade requires removing old shared object files. Please rebuild all installed 3rd party software e. That means the ABI remains stable for applications for a whole version, from the stable release to the final minor version.

However it may happen between major version upgrades like the one we are doing here in this how to upgrade FreeBSD from version This means if you happen to install software from ports you will have to rebuild all that software.

This can be a long time consuming process as well as tedious. However if you maintain your own repository with poudriere you may be very aware of the new steps to take. For those using ports in order to get third party applications you can rebuild those by issuing the following portmaster command.

For the rest of us who are using the pkg binary collection we will just update our packages like so. Running "pkg-static install -f pkg" recommended. Number of packages to be reinstalled: 1. As you can read the system is aware of the ABI changes from this major upgrade. If you happen to have several packages installed like say, the Apache web server it is more likely that you are presented with something more substantial such as:. The following 14 package s will be affected of 0 checked :.

Number of packages to be reinstalled: The process will require 2 MiB more space. After positive confirmation the packages are upgraded. Now it is time to run the freebsd-update install again. ISO Directory not empty. UTF Directory not empty. We can use two different commands to check the version is effectively installed.

If all you can see are regular boot messages like the ones pasted below there is nothing to worry about. Dec 21 BSD kernel: Root mount waiting for: usbus0.

Dec 21 BSD kernel: uhub0: 12 ports with 12 removable, self powered. Dec 21 BSD ntpd[]: ntpd 4. Dec 21 BSD kernel: ipfw: limit reached on entry You can also test the software you are using this box is working too. That includes using commands such as:. And indeed it is working. Active Internet connections. Again, everything seems to be correct and working as it is supposed to be.

Work a bit with the top command too. CPU: 0. Swap: M Total, M Free. This is all for the successful how to upgrade FreeBSD from There are no error messages in the log, services are up and running, network connections are up and running, so everything looks good. However the article goes on with the rollback section. Just in case something goes wrong and you need a rollback. Hopefully your upgrade has been good and dandy. But there are occasions this is not the case and solutions must be put into place.

And quick. As mentioned in the beginning of this article systems using ZFS can make use of the boot environments capability unlike the UFS powered ones. Although they chose to solve this issues by implementing hardware virtualization instead of going to OS level virtualization. Now, think of ZFS snapshots. Install the app. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser.

It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Thread starter Dane Start date Feb 10, Dane New Member Messages: When I'd done portupgrade it tells me that: Code:. Please report the problem to bf FreeBSD. Also, it might be a good idea to provide an overview of all packages installed on your system e.

FreeBSD 8. Dane said:. Click to expand Thanks for your answer. But now, I want to fix this problem first. There are many topics with this problem on the Internet, but there's no answer except the advice to portupgrade -caf.