FreeBSD 9.2 update from RC3 to RC4

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on September 23rd 2013 - Listed in BSD Unix

The newest FreeBSD version 9.2 is on the way - at the same time, 10-alpha was also released. At the time of this writing, the Release Candidate (RC) 4 for FreeBSD 9.2 is available.

Just a couple of days ago, I have installed the RC3 on a new server. The timing was good: it allowed me to test the FreeBSD upgrade possibilities.

First the uname output of the current system:

# uname -a
FreeBSD global1-swc.eplanet.everyware.ch 9.2-RC3 FreeBSD 9.2-RC3 #0 r254795: Sat Aug 24 20:25:04 UTC 2013     root@bake.isc.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

With the freebsd-update program, the installed system can be updated/upgraded. With the -r (release) option, the target version can be selected. Here I chose 9.2-RC4:

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.2-RC4
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 5 mirrors found.
Fetching public key from update5.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.2-RC3 from update5.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 2 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.
[...]
To install the downloaded upgrades, run "/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install".

As asked, the downloaded patches can now be installed:

# freebsd-update install
Installing updates...
Kernel updates have been installed.  Please reboot and run
"/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install" again to finish installing updates.

Similar to Linux upgrades, some programs/files are most likely in use and cannot be upgraded when in use. A reboot is necessary:

# shutdown -r now

Once the server is up again, the install command can be launched again to install the rest:

# freebsd-update install
Installing updates... done.

Now let's check the uname output again:

# uname -a
FreeBSD global1-swc.eplanet.everyware.ch 9.2-RC4 FreeBSD 9.2-RC4 #0 r255465: Wed Sep 11 05:11:03 UTC 2013     root@bake.isc.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

That was indeed very easy and fast! But please note that the RC3 was a new installed system without any manual configuration changes or additional applications installed.

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