freebsd stable - Jan 2007 - freebsd-update from 6.1 RELEASE to 6.2 RELEASE: directory creation caused failure.

I'm writing this email from a freebsd 6.2 system, but it was a rocky
upgrade for me.

I followed the process outlined at
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2006-11-26-freebsd-6.1-to-6.2-binary-upgrade.html
to upgrade my GENERIC i386 kernel and userland.

I had changed some configuration files, and when notified about it, i
created a directory /usr/upgrade/newfiles and downloaded the
appropriate copies of these files from the cvs into this directory.
And it seems that that was what caused my problems.

Everything seemed to being going OK, until near the end:

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -d /usr/upgrade install
Installing updates...freebsd-update.sh: cannot create newfiles: Is a directory
rm: newfiles: is a directory

Well, I wasn't sure if it that was just a warning, or an error.  I was
optimistic and thought the script had probably successfully finished.
I rebooted my computer ( triple-boot freebsd-linux-windows ), and
selected freebsd from the grub menu.  And that's when I saw:

No /boot/loader

Indeed.  There was no /boot/loader file.  There was a /boot/loader.old
file (I'm not sure if this .old file is from freebsd-update, or if
it's something I left behind once upon a time).

I was able to work around it by burning a cd of disc 1 of the 6.2
release, and running the cd/dvd fix-it shell.  I made a backup copy of
my /boot directory, copied the cd's /boot directory in, and then
copied back my original loader.conf file.

After successfully booting into freebsd again, I reran the script:
# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -d /usr/upgrade install
 Installing updates...freebsd-update.sh: cannot create newfiles: Is a directory
 rm: newfiles: is a directory

Hmmm ... same thing.  OK, I can take a hint.  I removed the
/usr/upgrade/newfiles directory and reran the script, which completed
succesfully, and prompted me to reboot and re-run the script, which I
did.  The userland update also finished successfully.


Despite the problem that I had, I can see that freebsd-update is a
great tool; kudos to the developer!

Suggestion for the developer: either permit directory creation in
/usr/upgrade, or document that it's a no-no.

Brian

Brian King wrote:
> I'm writing this email from a freebsd 6.2 system, but it was a rocky
> upgrade for me.
> 
> I followed the process outlined at
>
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2006-11-26-freebsd-6.1-to-6.2-binary-upgrade.html
> 
> to upgrade my GENERIC i386 kernel and userland.
> 
> I had changed some configuration files, and when notified about it, i
> created a directory /usr/upgrade/newfiles and downloaded the
> appropriate copies of these files from the cvs into this directory.
Oops.
> # sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -d /usr/upgrade install
> Installing updates...freebsd-update.sh: cannot create newfiles: Is a
> directory
> rm: newfiles: is a directory
Yeah, you're not supposed to do that.  In fact, it never occurred to me
that someone would do that, largely because the FreeBSD Update working
directory (/usr/upgrade in this case) is normally /var/db/freebsd-update.
But since people upgrading from FreeBSD 6.1 don't have FreeBSD Update
installed as part of the base system (and thus don't have the
"normal"
working directory) I added the flag to tell FreeBSD Update to use a
different directory instead.
> Suggestion for the developer: either permit directory creation in
> /usr/upgrade, or document that it's a no-no.
It will be documented. :-)

Thanks,
Colin Percival