OpenBSD Upgrade Guide: 3.6 to 3.7

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Note: Upgrades are only supported from one release to the release immediately following it. Do not skip releases.

Upgrading is a convenient way to bring your OpenBSD system up to the most recent version. However, the results are not intended to precisely match the results of a wipe-and-reload installation. Old library files in particular are not removed in the upgrade process, as they may be required by older applications that may or may not be upgraded at this time. If you REALLY wish to get rid of all these old files, you would probably be better off reinstalling from scratch.

Before upgrading...

Before upgrading, some users choose to remove all packages, and installing new versions after upgrade. If your platform is one of those that switched to gcc3 (macppc, i386), you SHOULD probably do this.

To quickly remove all packages from your system:

pkg_delete -q /var/db/pkg/*

After the upgrade, install the new versions of these applications.

Note that, with OpenBSD 3.7, the pkg tools now support in-place updating using pkg_add -r. This has been checked to work with most packages, in particular with the CD packages available in 3.5 or 3.6. Some important points apply:

pkg_add -r does not do global updates, but needs to be told which packages to update. Noting down the installed packages name with pkg_info, matching each package name to its newer equivalent, and running one pkg_add -r -q list_of_new_pkgs should work in most cases.
Every instance of mozilla is an exception. All mozilla, bloatzilla, firefox packages MUST be updated using the old procedure: run pkg_delete first, then run pkg_add with the new package.

i386 and macppc users: Due to the switch to gcc3, you must remove the /usr/include/g++ directory before upgrading, regardless whether you plan to use the install media or not:

rm -rf /usr/include/g++

Upgrading by install media

The easiest and safest way to upgrade from binary files is to boot from install media and follow the upgrade steps, which are very similar to the install process. Afterwards, do the /etc updates below.

Upgrading without install media

This is not the recommended process. Use the install media method if at all possible!

Sometimes, one needs to do an upgrade of a machine when one can't easily use the normal upgrade process. One can usually do this by carefully following a process similar to a source-based upgrade:

Place install files in a "good" location. Make sure you have sufficient room!
Install new kernel(s)
```
cd /path
rm /obsd ; ln /bsd /obsd && cp bsd /nbsd && mv /nbsd /bsd
cp bsd.rd bsd.mp /
```
Note the extra steps for copying over the primary kernel: those are done to ensure that there is always a valid copy of the kernel on the disk that the system can boot from should there be a really badly timed power outage or system crash.
Install new /etc/firmware files: Due to the fact that some uploaded "firmware" blobs were relocated from the kernel to files in the /etc/firmware directory, there are a few drivers which will break if there is no uploadable firmware file available when the new kernel boots. This will impact users of only a few devices, though all users can use this step without harm. To extract the firmware files from base37.tgz, use the following as root:
```
cd /
tar xzpf /path/base37.tgz "*etc/firmware/*"
```
before the next step.
Reboot on the new kernel: This might be a tempting step to skip, but it should be done now, as usually, the new kernel will run old userland apps (such as the soon to be important reboot!), but often a new userland will NOT work on the old kernel.
Stop any applications which might cause problems in the following steps.
Install new userland applications
```
cd /
tar xzpf /path/base37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/comp37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/game37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/man37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/misc37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/xbase37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/xfont37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/xserv37.tgz
tar xzpf /path/xshare37.tgz
```
Note: not all file sets will need to be installed for all applications, however, if you installed a file set originally, you should certainly upgrade it with the new file set now. Also note that the files in /etc are handled separately below, so etc37.tgz and xetc37.tgz are NOT unpacked here.
Update /dev. The new MAKEDEV file will be copied to /dev by the installation of base37.tgz, so you simply need to do the following:
```
cd /dev
./MAKEDEV all
```
Upgrade /etc as below.
Reboot

During this process, sendmail(8) may produce some error messages like the following:

    Nov 1 12:47:05 puffy sm-mta[16733]: filesys_update failed: No such file or directory, fs=., avail=-1, blocksize=380204

These messages can be safely ignored, or you may wish to halt sendmail(8) during the upgrade process.

Updates to `/etc`

Whether you upgrade by using an install media and doing a formal "upgrade" process, or do a "in-place" binary upgrade, there are certain manual steps that have to be performed.

New users and groups

The FTP daemon has been reworked to drop privileges, and an OSPF daemon has been added, so new users and groups are required. As root, add the following users and groups, using useradd(8):

useradd -u84 -g=uid -c"FTP Daemon" -d/var/empty -s/sbin/nologin _ftp
useradd -u85 -g=uid -c"OSPF Daemon" -d/var/empty -s/sbin/nologin _ospfd

These steps will add both the new users and their corresponding groups. Your environment may allow you to copy/paste those commands.

Userland Applications

X.org replaces XFree86: Due the XFree86 project's change of license, OpenBSD has switched to the X.org project's X Window System. The X11 configuration files must be updated, however. Many users can simply unpack xetc37.tgz without concern:

cd /
tar xzpf /path/xetc37.tgz

If you have made important manual changes to the files in /etc/X11 for any reason, you should NOT unpack the xetc37.tgz file as above, but rather manually merge your changes into the new files.

If you have an /etc/X11/XF86Config file that works on OpenBSD 3.6, renaming it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf will probably give you a fully functioning X Window system on OpenBSD 3.7. You may also find that the newer versions of X are much more "self-configuring" than earlier versions, and you may not need an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file at all now, depending on your hardware.

bgpd(8) behavior change: The new rde route-age [evaluate|ignore] changed behavior of bgpd. Until now evaluate was the implicit default but now the default is ignore. Route age evaluation is not specified in RFC 1771 and results in non deterministic decisions in preference for more stable links.

pfsync takes syncdev instead of syncif: When configuring the pfsync device, use 'syncdev' instead of the deprecated keyword 'syncif'.

OpenNTPD now sets the time immediately at startup: As of OpenBSD 3.7, OpenNTPD is able to make large time corrections, so it is no longer necessary to run rdate(8) to set the time before starting ntpd(8). You may wish to disable rdate(8) in your rc.conf.local (or rc.conf) file if you had opted to do this.

`/etc` file changes

You will want to extract the etc37.tgz files to a temporary location:

cd /tmp
tar xzpf /path/etc37.tgz

Files that can probably be copied from etc37.tgz "as is":

changelist
daily
fbtab
moduli
netstart
ospfd.conf
rc
security
services
mtree/*

Note that it IS possible to locally modify these files, if this has been done, manual merging will be needed. Here are copy/paste lines for copying these files, assuming you unpacked etc37.tgz in the above recommended place:

cd /tmp/etc
cp changelist daily fbtab moduli netstart ospfd.conf rc security services /etc
cp mtree/* /etc/mtree/

Files that must be manually merged, respecting any local changes made to them, if they were modified from the default, otherwise, just copy them over, too:

ftpusers
rc.conf
spamd.conf
sysctl.conf
mail/aliases
skel/.cshrc
skel/.profile

Finally, use mtree(8) to create any new directories:

mtree -qdef /etc/mtree/4.4BSD.dist -p / -u

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$OpenBSD: upgrade37.html,v 1.31 2019/05/28 01:53:11 bentley Exp $