freebsd-update: cannot open patchlist

[Randy Bush]

# uname -a
FreeBSD rip.psg.com 10.3-RELEASE-p24 FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE-p24 #0: Wed Nov 15 04:57:40 UTC 2017     root at amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.1-RELEASEa
...
.30900....30910....30920....30930....30940....30950....30960....30970....30980....30990....31000. done.
Applying patches... /usr/sbin/freebsd-update: cannot open patchlist: No such file or directory
done.
/usr/sbin/freebsd-update: cannot open files.wanted: No such file or directory
rm: files.wanted: No such file or directory
rm: filelist: No such file or directory
rm: patchlist: No such file or directory

rip.psg.com:/root# df -h
Filesystem            Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/mirror/gm1s1a     15G    540M     14G     4%    /
devfs                 1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
/dev/mirror/gm1s1d     15G     66M     14G     0%    /var
/dev/mirror/gm1s1e     15G    2.0M     14G     0%    /var/spool
/dev/mirror/gm1s1f     15G     47M     14G     0%    /root
/dev/mirror/gm1s1g    1.7T    648G    941G    41%    /usr
procfs                4.0K    4.0K      0B   100%    /proc
fdescfs               1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev/fd
/dev/md0              124M     32K    114M     0%    /tmp


all i have found so far on the net of a thousand lies is that i need to
upgrade to 10.3 first; but it is at 10.3.

randy