freebsd-update fails for old(ish) release?

[rowan194]

Trying to upgrade 12.1R to 12.4R (via 12.2R):

# freebsd-update -v debug upgrade -r 12.2-RELEASE
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 2 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 12.1-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org...
latest.ssl                                             512  B    9 MBps    00s
done.
Fetching metadata index...
a78662fabf48fd2503fb500d264ddfd8ff29c8a0a3caf8         225  B 4495 kBps    00s
done.
Fetching 1 metadata files...
/usr/libexec/phttpget update2.freebsd.org 12.1-RELEASE/amd64/m/eb9f90d46a9ce7e8eaab684ecb1b87be2d3410683a2b3dfda22714ff3293bf78.gz
http://update2.freebsd.org/12.1-RELEASE/amd64/m/eb9f90d46a9ce7e8eaab684ecb1b87be2d3410683a2b3dfda22714ff3293bf78.gz: 404 Error (ignored)
failed.

# freebsd-version -kru
12.1-RELEASE
12.1-RELEASE
12.1-RELEASE

# uname -a
FreeBSD xxx 12.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE r354405 GENERIC  amd64

Trying freebsd-update upgrade -r 12.4-RELEASE (jump a couple of releases) and freebsd-update fetch (minor update) also fails in a similar way.

I know 12.1 went EoL back in January 2021, but I'm still a bit surprised to see this fail at this point. Is this deliberate - once it's EoL you absolutely cannot upgrade this way - or likely to be some other kind of issue?

(A few weeks ago, on another server, I was able to jump from 12.2R, which was EoL about 18 months prior, to 12.4R, without any issues.)

 

[Alexander88207]

What if you are trying to update directly to 12.4R, instead of going one by one?

 

[rowan194]

What if you are trying to update directly to 12.4R, instead of going one by one?

I tried that too, but forgot to mention it. I have updated the OP text.

Based on the URL, it seems that freebsd-update is trying to fetch something that relates to the currently installed 12.1R release, which is probably why freebsd-update fetch also fails.

I was running a custom kernel, but I compiled and installed a GENERIC kernel before running freebsd-update. Not sure if this is the reason it's failing; this same procedure worked fine on the other 12.2R->12.4R upgrade I mentioned.

 

[SirDice]

You don't need to upgrade to any of the intermediate versions, you can upgrade directly to the new version in one go. Some of your patch files appear to be corrupt though. I would clear /var/db/freebsd-update/ and start freebsd-update -r 12.4-RELEASE upgrade again.

Is this going through a proxy? I've heard some people have issues, in some cases the proxy or IPS mangles the downloads.

 

[rowan194]

Some of your patch files appear to be corrupt though. I would clear /var/db/freebsd-update/ and start freebsd-update -r 12.4-RELEASE upgrade again.

Thanks, that fixed it! Any ideas on when (or if) such an upgrade (solely via freebsd-update) would break, because of EoL support? Can someone upgrade from, say, FreeBSD 9.x, or will it bomb out in a similar way to the OP?

 

[SirDice]

Any ideas on when (or if) such an upgrade (solely via freebsd-update) would break, because of EoL support?

No, has nothing to do with it.

Can someone upgrade from, say, FreeBSD 9.x,

You can, not entirely sure what the absolute minimal version is (freebsd-update(8) didn't exist before that version). Don't recommend such a big leap though, but that has more to do with the partition sizes of those old installs.