misc/131598: freebsd-update doesn't interact well with custom kernels

[Roy Badami]

>Number:         131598
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       freebsd-update doesn't interact well with custom kernels
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed Feb 11 22:00:13 UTC 2009
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Roy Badami
>Release:        7.1-RC1
>Organization:
>Environment:
>Description:
freebsd-update doesn't interact well with custom kernels.

When you do
    freebsd-update -r <release> upgrade
running a custom kernel, you get told you must rebuild your kernel before proceeding with freebsd-update install.

Unfortunately freebsd-update hasn't updated the kernel source at this point (and won't until it updates userland AFAICT).

If you ignore the message (which is the only thing you can really do, since neither the message nor the handbook explain *how* you're supposed to rebuild the kernel at this stage), and you just cross your fingers and run
    freebsd-update install
anyway, then the system claims to have updated the kernel - however it doesn't appear to have changed the kernel the system boots into (has it updated anything?).

If you run "freebsd-update install" a second time, it updates the userland as expected.  The /usr/src/sys tree is now up-to-date and you can *now* rebuild your kernel.

This seems to be what other people do in this situation - updating userland before the kernel - but AIUI this isn't a supported way of moving between releases (although it's worked OK for me for 7.0-RELEASE -> 7.1-RC1 - 7.1-RELEASE and will probably work most of the time for minor releases)

-roy
>How-To-Repeat:

>Fix:


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: