Accidentally aborted upgrade via freebsd-update - how to recover?

[Clifton Royston]

On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 10:20:28PM -0800, Jason Helfman wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 04:52:03PM -0800, Doug Barton thus spake:
> >On 12/27/2010 16:40, Damien Fleuriot wrote:
> >>On 12/27/10 11:58 PM, Clifton Royston wrote:
> >>>   OK, and oh well...  I wish there were some way to automate the diffing
> >>>out of the $FreeBSD lines.  I suppose those might be the artifact of
> >>>some previous upgrade, so that the file version present is not the one
> >>>expected for FreeBSD 6.1.
> >>
> >>Wait, do you mean like, mergemaster -F ?
> >>
> >>Excerpt from the manual:
> >>      -F          If the files differ only by VCS Id ($FreeBSD) install
> >>the new file.
> >>
> >>
> >>I've discovered this rather recently, it's a *lifesaver*
> >>
> >>This comes from fbsd7's version though, I can not say for the one you're
> >>still running on fbsd6
> >
> >You always want to run mergemaster from the version you are upgrading
> >_to_. It doesn't happen often (by design) but occasionally mergemaster
> >has to grow "special knowledge" of specific files/directories/etc. in a
> >new FreeBSD version.
> 
> As far as I can tell, freebsd-update doesn't use mergemaster.
> 
> /usr/src/usr.sbin/freebsd-update/freebsd-update.sh
> 
> Source installation does, however I don't believe a binary upgrade does.

  It might be an interesting project to work on enhancing freebsd-update
to use mergemaster - shared code, DRY, and all that.

...

  A brief update for the curious: this turned into the "sharks
circling" kind of upgrade <http://xkcd.com/349/> though not through any
fault of freebsd-update.

  It turned out after I had done the initial install steps at the
console that 7.1 doesn't detect the built-in re0 GbE interface on this
motherboard, which threw a major monkeywrench in the way of rebuilding
all the ports.  I should have recalled that there were some ongoing re
problems which Pyun was fixing around the time of 7.1.  As I didn't
want to downgrade - and couldn't safely after having installed userland
prematurely - I had a backup plan of booting from the CD drive, which
then turned out to have failed mechanically.  Fortunately this is my
home server and isn't running anything critical.  I stole a CD drive
from my usual desktop computer and could boot the loader/kernel on a
7.3 CD, which detects everything.  Following that, rebooting via the
hard drive got the interface running again.  (Why, I don't know - I
suspect it might be somehow picking up either the 7.3 loader or hints
due to having the CD set as the BIOS boot drive.)

  I got the old ports removed and essential ports rebuilt with portsnap
and portmaster (thank you, Doug Barton) and I'm pressing ahead with an
upgrade to 7.3 since it appears that kernel will work fine with this
motherboard.

  -- Clifton

-- 
    Clifton Royston  --  cliftonr at iandicomputing.com / cliftonr at lava.net
       President  - I and I Computing * http://www.iandicomputing.com/
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