Questions about avoid mixing NomadBSD and FreeBSD and NomadBSD upgrade

I read many posts here and try to avoid making big mistakes.
I installed the current NomadBSD to an USB device and from there to my internal SSD because of higher speed and convenience on my laptop.
I updated the packages with OctoPkg and everything works fine.
I don’t use freebsd-update for not mixing NomadBSD with FreeBSD. Is this right?
So I only use OctoPkg or pkg update to stay with an updated NomadBSD.

What to do with an upcoming new NomadBSD release and my installed system? With a reinstall, will all my data be deleted? (Of course I have a backup.) Or is it possible to use a “reinstall” and update my existing data without deleting them?

I would like to stay with NomadBSD. But I also wonder to install FreeBSD, which is more effort to get everything running. I used FreeBSD in the past, but I like the work of the NomadBSD developers and would like to stay with it.

The nomad developers will establish this in due course with a post here on the forum.
For my part, I have always done a new installation with new versions.

I have upgraded freebsd-update fetch install to FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p4 — everything works smoothly after reboot and pkg update.

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Thanks for your answers. I will use freebsd-update and pkg update to stay updated. And with a backup of my data I will see what happens on upcoming new releases.

Today I upgraded to FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p5 — so far so good.

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I also upgraded to Release-p5 without issues.

I have accepted the quarterly pkg upgrade yesterday. All updated packages (141 in my case) was installed without interference and NomadBSD continues to run smoothly, hooray!

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I have just upgraded NomadBSD to the latest FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE (following freebsd-update instruction), then updated 49 packages via OctoPkg. Everything is working perfectly, many thanks to devs!

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Hi vladas!

To upgrade to 14.2 throws me a problem with /boot/device.hints and I would know how to solve it …

root@NomadBSD# freebsd-update upgrade -r 14.2-RELEASE
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 14.1-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 1 metadata patches. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 1 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.

The following components of FreeBSD seem to be installed:
kernel/generic src/src world/base

The following components of FreeBSD do not seem to be installed:
kernel/generic-dbg world/base-dbg world/lib32 world/lib32-dbg

Does this look reasonable (y/n)? y

Fetching metadata signature for 14.2-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 1 metadata patches. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 1 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Fetching files from 14.1-RELEASE for merging... done.
Preparing to download files... done.
Attempting to automatically merge changes in files... done.

The following file could not be merged automatically: /boot/device.hints
Press Enter to edit this file in /usr/bin/vi and resolve the conflicts
manually...



Press Enter …

hint.atkbdc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.port="0x060"
hint.atkbd.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.atkbd.0.irq="1"
hint.psm.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.psm.0.irq="12"
hint.sc.0.at="isa"
hint.sc.0.flags="0x100"
hint.uart.0.at="acpi"
hint.uart.0.port="0x3F8"
hint.uart.0.flags="0x10"
<<<<<<< current version
hint.uart.0.irq="4"
#hint.uart.1.at="isa"
#hint.uart.1.port="0x2F8"
#hint.uart.1.irq="3"
hint.ppc.0.at="isa"
hint.ppc.0.irq="7"
=======
hint.uart.1.at="acpi"
hint.uart.1.port="0x2F8"
>>>>>>> 14.2-RELEASE
hint.atrtc.0.at="isa"
/var/db/freebsd-update/merge/new//boot/device.hints: unmodified: line 1

hint.atkbdc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.port="0x060"
hint.atkbd.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.atkbd.0.irq="1"
hint.psm.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.psm.0.irq="12"
hint.sc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.port="0x060"
hint.atkbd.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.atkbd.0.irq="1"
hint.psm.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.psm.0.irq="12"
hint.sc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.port="0x060"
hint.atkbd.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.atkbd.0.irq="1"
hint.psm.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.psm.0.irq="12"
hint.sc.0.at="isa"
hint.sc.0.flags="0x100"
hint.uart.0.at="acpi"
hint.uart.0.port="0x3F8"
hint.uart.0.flags="0x10"
<<<<<<< current version
hint.uart.0.irq="4"
#hint.uart.1.at="isa"
#hint.uart.1.port="0x2F8"
#hint.uart.1.irq="3"
hint.ppc.0.at="isa"
hint.ppc.0.irq="7"
=======
hint.uart.1.at="acpi"
hint.uart.1.port="0x2F8"
>>>>>>> 14.2-RELEASE
hint.atrtc.0.at="isa"
hint.atrtc.0.port="0x70"
hint.atrtc.0.irq="8"
hint.attimer.0.at="isa"
hint.attimer.0.port="0x40"
hint.attimer.0.irq="0"
hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled="1"
hint.p4tcc.0.disabled="1"



sudo ee /boot/device.hints:

hint.fdc.0.at="isa"
hint.fdc.0.port="0x3F0"
hint.fdc.0.irq="6"
hint.fdc.0.drq="2"
hint.fd.0.at="fdc0"
hint.fd.0.drive="0"
hint.fd.1.at="fdc0"
hint.fd.1.drive="1"
hint.atkbdc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.port="0x060"
hint.atkbd.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.atkbd.0.irq="1"
hint.psm.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.psm.0.irq="12"
hint.sc.0.at="isa"
hint.sc.0.flags="0x100"
hint.uart.0.at="isa"
hint.uart.0.port="0x3F8"
hint.uart.0.flags="0x10"
hint.uart.0.irq="4"
#hint.uart.1.at="isa"
#hint.uart.1.port="0x2F8"
#hint.uart.1.irq="3"
hint.ppc.0.at="isa"
hint.ppc.0.irq="7"
hint.atrtc.0.at="isa"
hint.atrtc.0.port="0x70"
hint.atrtc.0.irq="8"
hint.attimer.0.at="isa"
hint.attimer.0.port="0x40"
hint.attimer.0.irq="0"
hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled="1"
hint.p4tcc.0.disabled="1"

judd@NomadBSD ~> sudo freebsd-version -kru
14.1-RELEASE-p5
14.1-RELEASE-p5
14.1-RELEASE-p6
judd@NomadBSD ~> uname -aUmrs
FreeBSD NomadBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p5 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p5 GENERIC amd64 1401000

Any ideas ?
Thanks in advance!

Hi @judd, it looks like you did not follow the freebsd-update instruction completely:

# freebsd-update fetch install
# freebsd-update upgrade -r 14.2-RELEASE
# freebsd-update install
# reboot
# freebsd-update install
# freebsd-update install
# reboot
> freebsd-version -kru
> uname -KUr && neofetch

You were also faced the message (I can not remember the exact words) straight after the ‘upgrade’ , that the preparation completed and you now have to ‘freebsd-update install’.

If you are now told that the system is up to date and there are no updates, you will have to repeat ‘freebsd-update upgrade -r 14.2-RELEASE’ again, this time following ‘freebsd-update install’.

BTW, you do not need to escape vi and switch ir to ee, just delete outdated lines your cursor is on by typing “dd”, and then leave the editor by “:x” (saving your corrections to the file, or “:q!” to quit vi without saving, or “:w” to save first, then “:q” to quit). If you made a mistake in vi, type “undo” or just “u” after [Esc].

Although the instruction does not require that, it might be worth to align all the packages to the new FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE:

# pkg upgrade

before the last ‘freebsd-update install’.

1 Like

Hello again @vladas!

Thank you very much for your prompt response!

That’s exactly what I don’t understand and I’m struggling a bit with vi. :smile:

In your opinion, what are these obsolete lines that I should remove ?
Maybe they are the lines that are above: >>>>>>> 14.2-RELEASE ? ↓↓↓

Otherwise it’s clear to me, it’s just the /boot/device.hints file that won’t let me move to 14.2, as described above.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Honestly, I do not know. I have not modified device.hints myself, so I accepted updater’s suggestion to replace all the marked lines above with the new ones below (and also removed three lines beginning with <<<, ===, and >>>).

1 Like

Ok, no problem @vladas thanks a lot for your answers anyway!
I’ll see how I can manage to get to 14.2, I just need to take a few steps.

I made it!

I just had to delete the file:

rm -r /usr/bin/vi

1 Like