> On Dec 19, 2018, at 1:50 AM, Brian Neal <br...@aceshardware.com> wrote:
> 
> I’m looking for advice on doing a release upgrade of a running instance.  It 
> looks like the normal procedure using freebsd-update requires a reboot 
> between invocations of the install command, but after the first reboot, most 
> of the userland is non-functional, including most importantly sshd. Is it 
> safe to run the install commands back to back without rebooting?  Or is the 
> only safe procedure to build a new instance from scratch for each release?

Brian,

It’s not true that after the first reboot the userland is non-functional; sshd 
and friends should still be working fine. The first reboot switches you to the 
12.0 kernel, which is necessary as the first step before upgrading the userland 
to 12.0 – and of course potentially using `pkg-static` or ports to 
rebuild/reinstall your packages/ports against the new ABI.

If you’re running any kind of public-facing service, the safest method in my 
opinion *with as little downtime as possible* is to deploy a new instance and 
then point to it once everything is successfully reinstalled (e.g., DNS change, 
elastic IP change, elastic load balancer, etc.). Otherwise, the “safe” method 
to upgrade in place is to follow what the handbook says, including when to 
reboot between invocations of `freebsd-update`. As long as you follow exactly 
when it instructs a reboot, and when to upgrade/reinstall userland and 
packages/ports, you should be fine. If you’re still nervous, just snapshot your 
boot EBS volume first as an extra precautionary measure, and destroy it once 
you verify everything post-upgrade.


--
Matt Garber

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