mondieu

mondieu - portable alternative for freebsd-update.

mondieu is a simple replacement for freebsd-update. It allows you to just upgrade to whatever version of a FreeBSD release you want, as long as you have the releases' tarballs.

Just like freebsd-update it will scan your current filesystem and build a list of files that differ from the release. After confirming the list, it will be installed and you will get the chance to manually merge your config files. Unlike freebsd-update, this merging can't be done automatically lacking a common reference point for both releases.

Usage

mondieu is pretty easy to use and will take a couple of minutes to completely upgrade your system.

Issueing mondieu 10.1-RELEASE will download tarballs for 10.1-RELEASE from FreeBSD's primary source and install the files to your current system.

Optionally, these parameters can be used to customize mondieu's behaviour:

• -a architecture (default: current architecture)
• -d alternative chroot (default: /)
• -h show you these settings
• -F run `freebsd-update fetch install' afterwards
• -p parts of FreeBSD that are considered (default: kernel,base)
• -u hostname for fetching release (default: ftp.freebsd.org)
• -U specific URL for fetching release archives. This overrides -u
• -V show version
• -w don't manually merge these files but overwrite with new version
• -x ignore files for manual merge
• -X ignore files for manual merge when matching this pattern
• -y don't ask for confirmation, install the new files already (but still require manual merge, if needed)

Note: both -w and -x expect a single argument, so use quotes to define more files

beadm

Combine mondieu with beadm to create snapshots of your current filesystem before upgrading. When everything went smoothly, activate the snapshot as you current root filesystem and boot into it or otherwise revert:

beadm create myupgrade
beadm mount myupgrade /mnt
mondieu -d /mnt 10.1-RELEASE
beadm umount myupgrade
beadm activate myupgrade
reboot

Note: this will only work when your root filesystem has been prepared for this. Read beadm's HOWTO for instructions how you should prepare your filesystem to benefit from beadm.

ToDo

• check signature of downloaded tarballs
• support for tarballs on the filesystem instead of remote location
• detection of which parts (eg. kernel, base and doc) should be installed

Known issues

• merging configuration files cannot be done automatically since there is no common reference point for your current release and the one you're upgrading to.
• same goes for deleting deprecated files, there is currently no way of knowing which files can be deleted.

Contributing

Please help me make this tool better. Send feedback or even a pull request and help improve where you can.