freebsd-update - Cannot identify running kernel

[David Christensen]

On 2020-08-01 17:31, doug wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Aug 2020, Doug Denault wrote:
> 
>> I did an update from 11.3 --> 12.1 that did not seem to work.

>> I have a 12.0 
>> system that did not have the error so I thought I would update to 12.0 
>> to try to get a handle on my problem.

I assume you mean "update to 12.1"?


>> This update did not exactly work. It will boot and I suspect I can do 
>> anything not requiring access to /boot. 

On my system, /boot is a symlink; not a ZFS filesystem:

2020-08-01 18:10:51 toor at f3 ~
# freebsd-version ; uname -a
12.1-RELEASE-p7
FreeBSD f3.tracy.holgerdanske.com 12.1-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 
12.1-RELEASE-p7 GENERIC  amd64

2020-08-01 18:22:18 toor at f3 ~
# ll /boot
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  13 2019/10/31 21:37:10 /boot@ -> bootpool/boot

2020-08-01 18:22:44 toor at f3 ~
# zfs list -r | egrep 'NAME|boot|/$'
NAME                                                   USED  AVAIL 
REFER  MOUNTPOINT
bootpool                                               372M  1.42G 
190M  /bootpool
soho2_zroot/ROOT/default                              4.23G  4.28G  2.22G  /


> The zfs boot process is not 
>> bothered by this problem.
>>
>> zpool list
>> NAME       SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  CKPOINT  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP  
>> HEALTH ALTROOT
>> bootpool  1.98G   274M  1.72G        -         -    15%    13%  1.00x  
>> ONLINE -
>> zroot      920G  7.76G   912G        -         -     0%     0%  1.00x  
>> ONLINE -

So, a 1 TB HDD?  I would use that for data.


I put my systems on small SSD's:

2020-08-01 18:14:08 toor at f3 ~
# camcontrol devlist | grep ada0
<INTEL SSDSC2CW060A3 400i>         at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (ada0,pass0)


>> So ... is my analysis correct? If so how do it put bootpool/boot/ 
>> where "it belongs"?

Look for the symlink, as above.


> So after some reading, I might be making more of this than it is. Seems 
> to me because so little data is involved make /boot, copy the data and 
> perhaps rename bootpool to something just to be safe. 

I have assumed 'bootpool' is hard coded into the bootloader(s), and 
renaming it will break boot.  So, I have not tried renaming bootpool.


I would advise taking an image of your system drive before proceeding, 
but an image of a 1 TB system drive could require a lot of storage (this 
is why I use small SSD's for system drives).


> If so the next 
> question is did freebsd-update leave anything else behind?

I keep my system configuration files in a version control system (CVS).


I never do in-place OS major version upgrades.  Instead, I make sure the 
system configuration files are checked in, stop services, backup the 
data, pull the system drive, insert a blank system drive, do a fresh 
install, update the OS, install packages, update the packages, check out 
the old configuration files to a side directory, configure the system as 
required, restore the data, and start services.


David