OpenBSD Upgrade Guide: 6.7 to 6.8

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Upgrades are only supported from one release to the release immediately following.

Read through and understand this process before attempting it. For critical or physically remote machines, test it on an identical, local system first.

Before using any upgrade method

• Check available disk space in /usr. Verify that the /usr partition has a size of at least 1.1G. With less space the upgrade may fail and you should consider reinstalling the system instead.

• Read configuration and syntax changes and the package upgrade instructions. There were several configuration changes and changes in packages that may require planning before starting the upgrade.

Upgrade Methods

• Unattended Upgrade: The easiest method is an unattended upgrade using sysupgrade(8). The program will download all install sets, verify their signatures, and reboot to perform the upgrade automatically. Once the unattended upgrade has completed, continue below.

• Interactive Upgrade: If you insist on leaving out some of the install sets, you will want to perform an interactive upgrade. (sysupgrade upgrades with all install sets.)

• Manual Upgrade: The final option is using the manual upgrade process. (This is not recommended as it is the most error-prone method.)

Interactive Upgrade

• Get and verify bsd.rd. Download the ramdisk kernel and the cryptographically-signed checksum file for your architecture.

  bsd.rd

  [alpha] [amd64] [arm64] [armv7] [hppa] [i386] [landisk] [loongson] [luna88k] [macppc] [octeon] [sparc64]

  SHA256.sig

  [alpha] [amd64] [arm64] [armv7] [hppa] [i386] [landisk] [loongson] [luna88k] [macppc] [octeon] [sparc64]

  Verify bsd.rd and SHA256.sig using signify(1):

  $ signify -C -p /etc/signify/openbsd-68-base.pub -x SHA256.sig bsd.rd
  Signature Verified
  bsd.rd: OK

• Next, boot from the install kernel, bsd.rd, retrieved in the previous step. Place it in the root of your filesystem and instruct the boot loader to boot this kernel. Once this kernel is booted, choose the (U)pgrade option and follow the prompts.
• After the filesets have been installed, the system will reboot with the upgraded kernel. Now continue with the next step:

After the Upgrade

After upgrading the sets, the system will reboot with the upgraded kernel and run sysmerge(8) during boot. In some cases, configuration files cannot be modified automatically. Run

 # sysmerge

Next remove the old files. Finish up by upgrading the packages using pkg_add -u.

You may wish to check the errata page for any post-release fixes.

Manual Upgrade (without the install kernel)

Sometimes, you need to perform an upgrade of a machine for which the normal upgrade process is not possible. The most common case is a machine in a remote location where there is no easy access to the system console.

Preparation

• Place install files in a good location. Make sure you have sufficient space! Running out of space on a remote upgrade could be...unfortunate. Note that using softdeps can exacerbate the situation as deleted and overwritten files do not release their space immediately. Consider disabling the softdep mount option in /etc/fstab and rebooting before undertaking a manual upgrade. Having at least 500MB free on /usr would be recommended.

• Become root. While using doas(1) before each command is generally a good practice, the command will likely be broken by the last steps, so you should become root before starting this process. It might be good to verify your access to root using a method other than doas at this point, i.e., direct login or using su(1).

• Stop and/or disable any appropriate applications. During this process, all the userland applications will be replaced but may not be runnable, and strange things may happen as a result. You may also have issues with DNS resolution during the first reboot, so PF rules and NFS mounts dependent upon DNS may cause boot-up problems. There may be other applications which you wish to keep from running immediately after the upgrade; stop and disable them as well.

• Install new boot blocks. This should actually be done at the end of any upgrade. If this has been neglected, then failure to do this now may break serial console or other things, depending on your platform. Use installboot(8), assuming sd0 is your boot disk:

  # installboot sd0

Upgrading manually

• Install new kernels. The extra steps for copying over the primary kernel are done to ensure that there is always a valid kernel on the disk.

  If using the multiprocessor kernel:

  # cd /usr/rel    # where you put the release files
  # ln -f /bsd /obsd && cp bsd.mp /nbsd && mv /nbsd /bsd
  # cp bsd.rd /
  # cp bsd /bsd.sp

  If using the single processor kernel:

  # cd /usr/rel    # where you put the release files
  # ln -f /bsd /obsd && cp bsd /nbsd && mv /nbsd /bsd
  # cp bsd.rd bsd.mp /    # may give a harmless warning

• Enable KARL. Store the kernel's checksum:

  # sha256 -h /var/db/kernel.SHA256 /bsd 

• Install new userland. Save a copy of reboot(8), extract and install the release tarballs, reboot. Install base68.tgz last, because the new base system, in particular tar(1), gzip(1) and reboot(8), will not work with the old kernel. Either untar the needed filesets manually:

  # cp /sbin/reboot /sbin/oreboot
  # tar -C / -xzphf xshare68.tgz
  # tar -C / -xzphf xserv68.tgz
  # tar -C / -xzphf xfont68.tgz
  # tar -C / -xzphf xbase68.tgz
  # tar -C / -xzphf man68.tgz
  # tar -C / -xzphf game68.tgz
  # tar -C / -xzphf comp68.tgz
  # tar -C / -xzphf base68.tgz    # Install last!
  # /sbin/oreboot

  or, if you use ksh(1), you can do:

  # cp /sbin/reboot /sbin/oreboot
  # for _f in [!b]*68.tgz base68.tgz; do tar -C / -xzphf "$_f" || break; done
  # /sbin/oreboot

  Note that tar(1) can expand only one archive per invocation, so a simple glob won't work.

• After reboot, update /dev. Run MAKEDEV(8):

  # cd /dev
  # ./MAKEDEV all

• Update the boot loader. Still assuming sd0 is your boot disk:

  # installboot sd0

• Update system configuration files. Run sysmerge(8):

  # sysmerge

• Update firmware. There may be new firmware for your system. Update it with fw_update(1):

  # fw_update

• Finish up. Review the console output from boot (using dmesg -s) and correct any failures as necessary. All the steps following configuration changes below also apply to manual upgrades. Finally, remove /sbin/oreboot and update packages: pkg_add -u. Reboot once more to make sure you use the newest firmware files and run on your own kernel generated by KARL.

Configuration and syntax changes

• httpd.conf(5). To support non-localhost fastcgi sockets, the grammar in httpd.conf(5) has been changed from fastcgi socket :port to fastcgi socket tcp hostname/ip port. For example:

  location "/www/*" {
  	fastcgi socket :9090
  }

  would become:

  location "/www/*" {
  	fastcgi socket tcp 127.0.0.1 9090
  }

• ldapd(8). ldapd(8) no longer defaults to using the insecure TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1 protocols and ciphers with tls and ldaps. If your environment requires this for compatibility with older clients, add the new legacy keyword before tls and ldaps in ldapd.conf(5).

• snmpd.conf(5). The socket keyword is no longer supported. Any socket lines should be removed before upgrading.

  Additionally, snmpd(8)'s listen on statement changed from

  listen on <address> [tcp | udp]

  to

  listen on [tcp | udp] <address> [port <port>]

  The old syntax is deprecated and will be removed in the next release.

• npppd.conf(5). Its permission has been changed from 644 to 600 to protect some sensitive information (eg. RADIUS secret).

  # chmod 600 /etc/npppd/npppd.conf

Files to remove

• Remove the libperl.a file no longer included in the current release of perl(1):

  # rm -f /usr/lib/libperl.a

• Xenocara no longer includes libxkbui, which has been deprecated by X.Org. The old files need to be removed.

  # rm /usr/X11R6/lib/libxkbui.* \
       /usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig/xkbui.pc \
       /usr/X11R6/include/X11/extensions/XKBui.h

Special packages

• net/isc-bind. Outdated example configuration (including some "standard" zone files and an old root hints file) have been removed from the BIND 9 port. Root hints can be removed from your configuration, in which case the (newer) compiled-in defaults will be used. If your existing configuration uses these files, back them up before updating:

  # cd /var/named
  # tar czf old-bind-files.tgz etc/bind.keys etc/root.hint standard

• www/goaccess. The update to 1.4 moves the default config file path from /etc/goaccess.conf to /etc/goaccess/goaccess.conf. Make sure to move your own config file if you customized one.

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