OpenBSD Upgrade Guide: 3.7 to 3.8

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Note: Upgrades are only supported from one release to the release immediately following it. Do not skip releases.

It is highly recommended that you read through and fully understand this process before attempting it. If you are doing it on a critical or physically remote machine, it is recommended that you test this process on an identical, local system to verify its success before attempting on a critical or remote computer.

Upgrading is a convenient way to bring your OpenBSD system up to the most recent version. However, the results are not intended to precisely match the results of a wipe-and-reload installation. Old library files in particular are not removed in the upgrade process, as they may be required by older applications that may or may not be upgraded at this time. If you REALLY wish to get rid of all these old files, you would probably be better off reinstalling from scratch.

Before upgrading...

To quickly remove all packages from your system:

pkg_delete -q /var/db/pkg/*

Note that, with OpenBSD 3.8, the pkg tools now support in-place updating using pkg_add -r. This has been checked to work with most packages, in particular with the CD packages available in 3.6 or 3.7. Some important points apply:

• pkg_add -r does not do global updates, but needs to be told which packages to update. A new option pkg_add -u can be used to find out the exact list of packages to pass to pkg_add -r.
• pkg_add -r -F update -F updatedepends -q list_of_new_pkgs should work in most cases.
• mozilla packages in 3.7 can now safely be updated to a 3.8 version.

tx(4) driver is now epic(4). If your system has a tx(4) based card (such as SMC EtherPower II 10/100 cards), it will be supported by a different driver on OpenBSD 3.8 than it was on 3.7. BEFORE doing the upgrade, copy your /etc/hostname.tx* file(s) to corresponding /etc/hostname.epic* files, otherwise you will not have functioning network during and after the upgrade process.

Upgrading by install media

Upgrading without install media

Sometimes, one needs to do an upgrade of a machine when one can't easily use the normal upgrade process. One can usually do this by carefully following a process similar to a source-based upgrade:

• Place install files in a "good" location. Make sure you have sufficient room!
• Stop any "insecure" applications from starting at boot: There will be a time when PF will be unlikely to be running during this upgrade process, but your applications may still start and run properly. Any application dependant upon PF for security should be disabled before this happens, and should not be re-enabled until proper PF operation is verified after upgrade. There may be other applications which you wish to keep from running during the upgrade, stop and disable them as well.
• Install new kernel(s)

  cd /path
  rm /obsd ; ln /bsd /obsd && cp bsd /nbsd && mv /nbsd /bsd
  cp bsd.rd bsd.mp /
  

  Note the extra steps for copying over the primary kernel: those are done to ensure that there is always a valid copy of the kernel on the disk that the system can boot from should there be a really badly timed power outage or system crash.
• Install new /etc/firmware files: Due to the fact that some uploaded "firmware" blobs were relocated from the kernel to files in the /etc/firmware directory, there are a few drivers which will break if there is no uploadable firmware file available when the new kernel boots. This will impact users of only a few devices, though all users can use this step without harm. To extract the firmware files from base38.tgz, use the following as root:

  cd /
  tar xzpf /path/base38.tgz "*etc/firmware/*"
  

  before the next step.
• Reboot on the new kernel: This might be a tempting step to skip, but it should be done now, as usually, the new kernel will run old userland apps (such as the soon to be important reboot!), but often a new userland will NOT work on the old kernel.
• Install new userland applications. Do NOT install etc38.tgz and xetc38.tgz now!

  cd /
  tar xzpf /path/base38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/comp38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/game38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/man38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/misc38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/xbase38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/xfont38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/xserv38.tgz
  tar xzpf /path/xshare38.tgz
  

  Note: not all file sets will need to be installed for all applications, however if you installed a file set originally, you should certainly upgrade it with the new file set now.

  Note: the files in /etc are handled separately below, so etc38.tgz and xetc38.tgz are NOT unpacked here.

• Update /dev. The new MAKEDEV file will be copied to /dev by the installation of base38.tgz, so you simply need to do the following:

  cd /dev
  ./MAKEDEV all
  

• Upgrade /etc as below.
• Reboot

    Nov 1 12:47:05 puffy sm-mta[16733]: filesys_update failed: No such file or directory, fs=., avail=-1, blocksize=380204

Updates to /etc

New users and groups

useradd -u86 -g=uid -c"HostAP Daemon" -d/var/empty -s/sbin/nologin _hostapd

Userland Applications

/etc file changes

cd /tmp
tar xzpf /path/etc38.tgz

hostapd.conf
netstart
pf.os
rc
services
mtree/*

cd /tmp/etc
cp hostapd.conf netstart pf.os rc services /etc
cp mtree/* /etc/mtree/

Files that must be manually merged, respecting any local changes made to them, if they were modified from the default, otherwise, just copy them over, too:

ftpusers
inetd.conf
login.conf
rc.conf
sysctl.conf
syslog.conf
mail/aliases

cd /
patch -C -p0 <upgrade38.patch

Note that since the /etc/mail/aliases file has been changed, you need to run newaliases(8) to have them take effect.

The following files have had changes which should be looked at, but it is unlikely they should be directly copied or merged (i.e., if you are using pf.conf, look at the suggested change of strategy, and decide if it is appropriate for your use).

pf.conf
spamd.conf
/root/.profile

mtree -qdef /etc/mtree/4.4BSD.dist -p / -u

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