Using freebsd-update after upgrading from source

[Manolis Kiagias]

Victor Sudakov wrote:
> Colleagues,
>
> I have been updating 6.2-RELEASE with freebsd-update. Recently I
> upgraded it to RELENG_6_3 from source. Can I continue using
> freebsd-update or must I upgrade only from source from now on?
>
>   

I don't see why not. freebsd-update will download binary updates to the 
system as well as the relevant sources for them (look at 
/etc/freebsd-update.conf to verify).

> I conducted an experiment and got inconclusive results. I had upgraded
> to RELENG_6_3-p2 where the problems with libpthread and ssh are
> already fixed. However, when I ran freebsd-update, it did replace
> libpthread and libssh. It also replaced the kernel, downgrading it
> from 6.3-RELEASE-p2 to 6.3-RELEASE-p1!
>   

Don't be so sure. If you are running a GENERIC kernel, freebsd-update 
simply downloaded the latest. If -p2 did not have any kernel updates (it 
did not IIRC) you got the kernel for -p1.  The fact it replaced your 
GENERIC (which had a -p2 deisgnation in uname) is probably because this 
was compiled on your system so freebsd-update did not recognize the 
version. These two should be functionally identical. In fact if you just 
recompile the kernel now, it will report -p2 (but this is only a 
cosmetic change, if the kernel sources have not been changed by 
freebsd-update).
Have a look at this file:

/usr/src/sys/conf/newvers.sh

look at the "BRANCH"

if it says "RELEASE-p2" this is what you will get if you recompile the 
kernel.