freebsd-update not updating reported patchlevel

[Robert Bonomi]

Mike Brown <mike at skew.org> wrote;
> I installed 8.2-RELEASE when it was new, and have been just using 
> freebsd-update since then. I run freebsd-update whenever there are new 
> critical patches. But for some reason, my system's reported patchlevel number 
> hasn't updated since p3.

[sneck]

> But 'uname -r' continues to return "8.2-RELEASE-p3". Rebooting doesn't help. 
> Is there something I need to do in order to bump the reported patchlevel? I 
> thought this was supposed to happen automatically, since I didn't have to do 
> anything to get it up to -p3.

Amazingly, this very question was covered on this list within the last few
hours.   <grin>

Executive summary:
the kernel ID string that uname reports changes only when the -kernel- is
changed.

-p4, -p5, -p6, and -p7. have -not- involved any changes to the kernel.
hence the ID string has stayed at '-p3'.

While this _is_ counter-intuitive, it does make sense to avoid pushing a
new k ernel out, and/or forcing an admin to rebuild a custom kernel, when
the -only- change would be to the ID string.