How to compare an existing, old, FreeBSD installation against latest RELEASE version.

I have wasted a considerable of time trying to update existing FreeBSD installations because of problems with freebsd-update being unable to successfully retrieve all the required patches for one reason or another, so have been wondering about overlaying a RELEASE version of the system over the existing system, and wondering how to identify any customisations made since the original system was installed.

Has anyone attempted to try and do this?

Apart from /boot and /etc which directories are likely candidates to have been customised?
 
etcupdate will write into /etc.
ports & packages into /usr/local & /usr/local/etc.
freebsd-update will write into /bin,/sbin,/usr/bin,/usr/sbin,etc ...
 
/usr/local/etc lots of ports/packages have their config there.
A fresh install of FreeBSD doesn't put anything in /usr/local so I don't need to worry about overwriting anything there.

That's one of the great things about the design of FreeBSD, it keeps the base OS separate from applications.
 
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I've noticed that a number files differ between 13.1 and 12.2 simply in terms of the first line although the files are essentially the same, ie 12.2 includes version/releng info whereas 13.1 just has # $FreeBSD$ on the first line.

Is there any way to tell diff() to treat two files as being the same if they only differ in this regard?
 
I am using freebsd-update and I never did and I never saw in the instructions to use etcupdate. And I am doing the same from version 6.?.
 
You don't need to use etcupdate(8) when you are performing binary upgrade using freebsd-update(8). When you are using STABLE or CURRENT which can't be upgraded via freebsd-update your option is to perform an upgrade using the source and merge all configuration changes with etcupdate(8). If you are using FreeBSD from version 6 then most likely you are more familiar with mergemaster(8) which was the tool to merge those configurations back then.


Also before the update always read /usr/src/UPDATING and release notes from https://www.freebsd.org/releases/
 
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