Solved do I need to do bectl create updates prior to freebsd-update fetch install

[decuser]

I'm cleaning up my notes now that I'm committed to running FreeBSD on my desktop full-time. I noticed that when I run freebsd-update it creates a snapshot of the environment? So, in theory, I shouldn't need to create one prior to running the command. Is what freebsd-update doing sufficient if something were to go wrong, or do I need to take my own snapshot?

 

[sko]

IIRC since 13.0-RELEASE freebsd-update(8) automatically creates BEs, but you can disable this behaviour in /etc/freebsd-update.conf, e.g. to keep your BEs clean and meaningfully named - freebsd-update only adds a timestamp, so it gets quite messy relatively fast.

Especially for minor/major release upgrades I create BEs that are named after the new version, boot into that BE and perform the whole freebsd-update upgrade in that new BE. This way one can easily distinguish BEs and what OS version they are referring to - timestamps are completely opaque in that manner, and every BE has a creation date anyways, so the information is redundant.

To be clear: it is nice to have that mechanism in freebsd-update, as it provides a safety net for every OS upgrade without having to remember to create a BE beforehand, but if you like to keep the list of BEs (and disk space used by them) somewhat manageable, I still prefer the manual way, especially because the naming convention of freebsd-update, lets say, "leaves room for improvement".

 

[SirDice]

I'd look at bectl list before running freebsd-update(8). Clean up any old BE you may have lingering. If you're not that familiar with BEs that's fine, keep everything on the default BE. It should be marked with NR:

dice@maelcum:~ % bectl list
BE                                Active Mountpoint Space Created
14.0-RELEASE-p2_2023-12-20_112649 -      -          1.12G 2023-12-20 11:26
default                           NR     /          4.09G 2023-06-03 08:31

Then go through the freebsd-update(8) process. Some time after the update, and you are sure everything is working correctly, remove the old BEs that were created during the update. Again, keep everything just set to default.

 

[grahamperrin]

IIRC since 13.0-RELEASE freebsd-update(8) automatically creates BEs, …

Relevant improvements to bectl(8) were merged to earlier branches:

bectl(8): Add a "check" command · freebsd/freebsd-src@490e13c

This command simply returns 0 at the moment and explicitly takes no arguments. This should be used by utilities wanting to see if bectl can operate on the system they're running, or with a spec...

github.com

MFC r352211: bectl(8): Add a "check" command · freebsd/freebsd-src@2b90894

This command simply returns 0 at the moment and explicitly takes no arguments. This should be used by utilities wanting to see if bectl can operate on the system they're running, or with a spec...

github.com

For the enhancement to freebsd-update(8):

freebsd-update: create a ZFS boot environment on install · freebsd/freebsd-src@f28f138

Updated freebsd-update to allow it to create boot environments using bectl should the system support it. The bectl utility was updated in r352211 (490e13c1403f) to support a 'check' to dete...

github.com

– I can not find a merge to any releng branch for 12.⋯, however from what ogogon wrote in the topic below, it seems possible/likely that the enhancement was present in 12.3-RELEASE.

ZFS: How to properly remove unnecessary snapshots and not damage data?

Colleagues, tell me, please, how can I remove unnecessary snapshots without error? Apparently, every time, with a binary update of the operating system, a snapshot was put on zroot. ogogon@server:/tmp# zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT zroot...

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