How to do world and kernel binary upgrade of FreeBSD 7.2 RELEASE to FreeBSD 9.0

Tuesday, 2nd October 2012

FreeBSD 7.2 to FreeBSD 9.0 kernel world and kernel binary upgrade fbsd logo

1. Use FreeBSD upgrade with 9.0-RELEASE as an argument


freebsd# freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.0-RELEASE
....

Note that you will get on screen an error message like so:

The update metadata is correctly signed, but failed an integrity check.
Cowardly refusing to proceed any further.

You can safely ignore the message but anyways it is good to do following substitution in freebsd-update sript:

2. Patch freebsd-update script with sed


freebsd# sed -i '' -e 's/=_/=%@_/' /usr/sbin/freebsd-update
....

After that, run freebsd-update, one more time:


freebsd# freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.0-RELEASE
....

3. Confirm merges and changes from 7.2 to 9.0

Here during the upgrade you will be prompted for about 20-30 questions, which in most cases will be okay if you answer with yes. Most questions, are just notifications that in FreeBSD 9.0, some extra users were added some version release numbers are changed and the old files need to get merged with the new ones. It is good idea to read all the prompts and be sure to know what you’re doing before answering. Anyhow in my case I was quite in hurry so I simply did yes and q (to quit each of the diff notification screens pop-ping up after each yes answer.

4. Install all the freebsd-update upgrade fetched binaries

Once this process is completed you can safely install FBSD 9.0 kernel and world binaries:


freebsd# freebsd-update install
....

5. Restart the system to test if FreeBSD 9.0 RELEASE just installed new kernel boots

To test if all is okay with the update restart system:


# shutdown -r now
....

After system boots, do uname and uptime to assure system boots with 9.0 kernel:


freebsd# uptime
7:37PM up 2 days, 22:37, 1 user, load averages: 1.05, 1.02, 1.00
freebsd# uname -a;
FreeBSD freebsd 9.0-RELEASE-p3 FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE-p3 #0: Tue Jun 12 01:47:53 UTC 2012 root@i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
freebsd#

5. Finalize binary and world upgrade

Then to finalize the binary BSD world and kernel update once again issue:


freebsd# freebsd-update install
...
Please rebuild all installed 3rd party software (e.g., programs
installed from the ports tree) and then run
"/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install" again to
finish installing updates.


freebsd# freebsd-update install
....

That’s all FreeBSD 7.2 -> 9.0 (kernel and world) upgrade is succesful. After the upgrade some packages might not be working and you will have to check and manually update ports which are not working (due to linked to old FreeBSD 7.2 world libraries and so on). It is also good to upgrade all installed ports. I will explain how I did ports upgrade a separate article. Cheers 😉

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