freebsd-update - Cannot identify running kernel

[doug at safeport.com]

On Sun, 2 Aug 2020, doug wrote:

> On Sat, 1 Aug 2020, David Christensen wrote:
>
>> 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
>
> Thank you. All the systems I have that use zfs I either did the default zfs 
> install or they are the way they came from the manufacturer. This system 
> has no data on it so I can experiement away. I had assumed the bootpool 
> pool came from freebsd-update. I do not remember that /boot was a symlink 
> bur was wasn't really paying any attention to that. I appreciate all the 
> info.

The problem of freebsd-update not working was caused by the absense of 
/boot. The fix is, as suggested above, make /boot a symlink to 
/bootpool/boot. I absoluted verified this as my first attempt was to copy 
/bootpool/boot --> /boot. I then updated 12.0 --> 12.1. However this boots 
12.0. Apparently from posts not all 12.x systems have /bootpool/boot.