why does freebsd-update and uname report different patch levels?

[andrew clarke]

On Tue 2017-11-14 12:04:19 UTC-0500, James B. Byrne via freebsd-questions (freebsd-questions at freebsd.org) wrote:

> We have recently completed upgrading all of our freebsd-11 systems to
> 11.1.  Now when we run freebsd-update fetch we see this:
> 
> # freebsd-update fetch
> src component not installed, skipped
> Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found.
> Fetching metadata signature for 11.1-RELEASE from
> update5.freebsd.org... done.
> Fetching metadata index... done.
> Fetching 2 metadata patches.. done.
> Applying metadata patches... done.
> Fetching 2 metadata files... done.
> Inspecting system... done.
> Preparing to download files... done.
> 
> No updates needed to update system to 11.1-RELEASE-p3.
> 
> However, when we do 'uname -a' on the same system then we see this:
> 
> FreeBSD inet13.hamilton.harte-lyne.ca 11.1-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD
> 11.1-RELEASE-p1 #0: Wed Aug  9 11:55:48 UTC 2017    
> root at amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
> 
> Why is there a difference in the reported patch level of the same system?

'uname -a' shows the version of the currently running kernel.

'freebsd-version -k' shows the version of the installed kernel.

'freebsd-version -u' shows the version of the installed userland.

Often freebsd-update does not to patch the kernel. It is normal to see
the kernel and userland at different patch levels.