Upgrade Guide: 7.7 to 7.8
[FAQ Index] | [7.6 -> 7.7] [7.8 -> 7.9]
Upgrades are only supported from one release to the release immediately following.
Read through and understand this process before attempting it. For critical or physically remote machines, test it on an identical, local system first.
Before using any upgrade method
- Check available disk space in /usr.
Verify that the
/usrpartition has a size of at least 1.1G. With less space the upgrade may fail and you should consider reinstalling the system instead. - Read configuration and syntax changes and the package upgrade instructions. There were several configuration changes and changes in packages that may require planning before starting the upgrade.
Upgrade Methods
- Unattended Upgrade:
The easiest method is an unattended upgrade using
sysupgrade(8).
The program will download all the install sets, verify their signatures, and
reboot to perform the upgrade automatically. Once the unattended upgrade has
completed, continue below.
- Interactive Upgrade:
If you insist on leaving out some of the install sets, you will want to
perform an interactive upgrade. (sysupgrade
upgrades with all install sets.)
- Manual Upgrade: The final option is using the manual upgrade process. (This is not recommended as it is the most error-prone method.)
Interactive Upgrade
- Get and verify
bsd.rd. Download the ramdisk kernel and the cryptographically-signed checksum file for your architecture.bsd.rd- [alpha] [amd64] [arm64] [armv7] [hppa] [i386] [landisk] [luna88k] [macppc] [octeon] [powerpc64] [riscv64] [sparc64]
SHA256.sig- [alpha] [amd64] [arm64] [armv7] [hppa] [i386] [landisk] [luna88k] [macppc] [octeon] [powerpc64] [riscv64] [sparc64]
Verify
bsd.rdandSHA256.sigusing signify(1):$ signify -C -p /etc/signify/openbsd-78-base.pub -x SHA256.sig bsd.rd Signature Verified bsd.rd: OK
- Next, boot from the install kernel,
bsd.rd, retrieved in the previous step. Place it in the root of your filesystem and instruct the boot loader to boot this kernel. Once this kernel is booted, choose the(U)pgradeoption and follow the prompts. - After the filesets have been installed, the system will reboot with the upgraded kernel. Now continue with the next step:
After the Upgrade
After upgrading the sets, the system will reboot with the upgraded kernel and run sysmerge(8) during boot. In some cases, configuration files cannot be modified automatically. Run
# sysmergeto check and perform these configuration changes.
Next remove the old files.
Finish up by upgrading the packages using pkg_add -u.
You may wish to check the errata page for any post-release fixes.
Manual Upgrade (without the install kernel)
This is NOT the recommended process. Use the unattended or interactive upgrade methods if at all possible!Sometimes, you need to perform an upgrade of a machine for which the normal unattended or interactive upgrade process is not possible.
Preparation
- Place install files in a good location.
Make sure you have sufficient space!
Running out of space on a remote upgrade could be...unfortunate.
Having at least 500MB free on
/usrwould be recommended. - Become root.
While using
doas(1)
before each command is generally a good practice, the command will likely
be broken by the last steps, so you should become root before starting
this process.
It might be good to verify your access to root using a method other than
doas at this point, i.e., direct login or using
su(1).
- Stop and/or disable any appropriate applications.
During this process, all the userland applications will be replaced but
may not be runnable, and strange things may happen as a result.
You may also have issues with DNS resolution during the first reboot, so
PF rules and NFS mounts dependent upon DNS may cause boot-up problems.
There may be other applications which you wish to keep from running
immediately after the upgrade; stop and disable them as well.
- Install new boot blocks.
This should actually be done at the end of any upgrade.
If this has been neglected, then failure to do this now may break serial
console or other things, depending on your platform.
Use
installboot(8), assuming
sd0is your boot disk:# installboot sd0
Upgrading manually
- Install new kernels.
The extra steps for copying over the primary kernel are done
to ensure that there is always a valid kernel on the disk.
If using the multiprocessor kernel:
# cd /usr/rel # where you put the release files # ln -f /bsd /obsd && cp bsd.mp /nbsd && mv /nbsd /bsd # cp bsd.rd / # cp bsd /bsd.sp
If using the single processor kernel:# cd /usr/rel # where you put the release files # ln -f /bsd /obsd && cp bsd /nbsd && mv /nbsd /bsd # cp bsd.rd bsd.mp / # may give a harmless warning
- Enable KARL.
Store the kernel's checksum:
# sha256 -h /var/db/kernel.SHA256 /bsd
- Install new userland.
Save a copy of reboot(8), extract and install the release tarballs, reboot.
Install
base78.tgzlast, because the new base system, in particular tar(1), gzip(1) and reboot(8), will not work with the old kernel. Either untar the needed filesets manually:# cp /sbin/reboot /sbin/oreboot # tar -C / -xzphf xshare78.tgz # tar -C / -xzphf xserv78.tgz # tar -C / -xzphf xfont78.tgz # tar -C / -xzphf xbase78.tgz # tar -C / -xzphf man78.tgz # tar -C / -xzphf game78.tgz # tar -C / -xzphf comp78.tgz # tar -C / -xzphf base78.tgz # Install last! # /sbin/oreboot
or, if you use ksh(1), you can do:# cp /sbin/reboot /sbin/oreboot # for _f in [!b]*78.tgz base78.tgz; do tar -C / -xzphf "$_f" || break; done # /sbin/oreboot
Note that tar(1) can expand only one archive per invocation, so a simple glob won't work. - After reboot, update
/dev. Run MAKEDEV(8):# cd /dev # ./MAKEDEV all
- Update the boot loader.
Still assuming
sd0is your boot disk:# installboot sd0
- Update system configuration files.
Run sysmerge(8):
# sysmerge
- Update firmware.
There may be new firmware for your system.
Update it with
fw_update(8):
# fw_update
- Finish up.
Review the console output from boot (using
dmesg -s) and correct any failures as necessary. All the steps following configuration changes below also apply to manual upgrades. Finally, remove/sbin/orebootand update packages:pkg_add -u. Reboot once more to make sure you use the newest firmware files and run on your own kernel generated by KARL.
Configuration and syntax changes
- The
builduser needs its ownbuildlogin class instead of thedefaultclass to be able to build LLVM 19. The sysmerge(8) utility adds the login class to login.conf(5), but the build user needs to be added to this class manually:# user mod -L build build
Files to remove
- Nothing of note this release
Special packages
- freetds.
FreeTDS 1.5 adds support for TDS protocol version 8.0. If you
previously had
"tds version = 8.0"in /etc/freetds.conf it would have been falling back to an older version and may have issues after updating. You may like to change that to a specific version or"tds version = auto"in advance of updating, and test before trying "8.0". - php.
The default version of PHP in ports has changed from 8.2 to
8.3. Follow the "Moving between PHP release branches" section of
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/php-8.3 for instructions about
updating .ini file symlinks, etc.
- rbw. Beginning in OpenBSD 7.8, support for Yubico OTP authentication has been removed. You must add or use a different authenticator which doesn't rely on OTP functionality prior to adding or synchronizing an account.
$OpenBSD: upgrade78.html,v 1.6 2026/05/12 22:56:42 tj Exp $