BSD Cafe Billboard

A major upgrade example: 14.4-RELEASE to 15.1-RELEASE

All commands should be run as root.

1. pkg update
2. pkg upgrade -Uy -r FreeBSD pkg
3. freebsd-update fetch
4. freebsd-update install
5. freebsd-update upgrade -r 15.1-RELEASE
6. freebsd-version -kru ; uname -mvKU
7. freebsd-update install
8. do not reboot the operating system – ignore the on-screen advice from freebsd-update
9. freebsd-version -kru ; uname -KU
10. /bin/sh
11. export abi=FreeBSD:15:$(uname -p)
12. export osversion=1501000
13. pkg-static -o ABI=$abi -o OSVERSION=$osversion -o IGNORE_OSVERSION=yes update
14. pkg-static -o ABI=$abi -o OSVERSION=$osversion -o IGNORE_OSVERSION=yes upgrade -Fqy
15. ignore all on-screen recommendations to force a bootstrap of pkg
16. pkg-static -o ABI=$abi -o OSVERSION=$osversion -o IGNORE_OSVERSION=yes upgrade -Fqy
17. pkg-static -o ABI=$abi -o OSVERSION=$osversion -o IGNORE_OSVERSION=yes upgrade -U -r FreeBSD-kmods
18. pkg-static -o ABI=$abi -o OSVERSION=$osversion -o IGNORE_OSVERSION=yes upgrade -U -g 'virtualbox-ose-additions*'
19. exit
20. upgrade the boot loader
21. disable loading of kernel modules for NVIDIA GPUs – you can use sysrc(8)
22. shutdown -r +10min "restarting with the upgraded kernel and boot loader"
23. after this restart, if software such as Discover invites you to upgrade software, ignore the invitation
24. freebsd-version -kru
25. freebsd-update install
26. be patient
27. freebsd-version -kru
28. if /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf includes FreeBSD and FreeBSD-kmods, change the names to FreeBSD-ports and FreeBSD-ports-kmods
29. pkg bootstrap -fy
30. pkg upgrade -fFqy -r FreeBSD-ports -r FreeBSD-ports-kmods
31. pkg upgrade -fFqy -r FreeBSD-ports -r FreeBSD-ports-kmods
32. pkg upgrade -fU -r FreeBSD-ports -r FreeBSD-ports-kmods
33. if reinstalling all third-party software is not possible, install misc/compat14x
34. if the previous run of freebsd-update install asked you to rerun the command, do so
35. shutdown -r +10min "restarting with the upgraded userland"

Raise your glasses to the other multi-OS forums:

• https://github.com/DiscoverBSD/awesome-bsd#forums-and-communities

Vive le fediverse!

Cheers

Essentially, two commands:

1. pkg upgrade -Fqy
2. pkg upgrade -qUy && shutdown -r +30 "restarting with an upgraded kernel"

– it was not necessary to repeat the first.

root@clean:~ # freebsd-version -kru ; uname -mvKU
15.1-RC3-p1
15.1-RC3-p1
15.1-RC3-p1
FreeBSD 15.1-RC3-p1 releng/15.1-n283561-e89f5d0df8fd GENERIC amd64 1501000 1501000
root@clean:~ # pkg upgrade -Fqy
root@clean:~ # pkg upgrade -qUy
Generating apropos(1) database for /usr/share/man...
Generating apropos(1) database for /usr/share/openssl/man...
=====
Message from FreeBSD-local-unbound-15.1:

--
After upgrading local-unbound, the configuration file should be regenerated
by running "service local_unbound setup" before restarting the service.
root@clean:~ # freebsd-version -kru ; uname -KU
15.1-RELEASE
15.1-RC3-p1
15.1-RELEASE
1501000 1501000
root@clean:~ # shutdown -r +30 "restarting with an upgraded kernel"

Please note

This is not an encouragement to perform upgrades before official announcements.

For the second command, I used the --quiet and --yes options only because in this case – a test machine in VirtualBox – I had confidence that installing packages would have no adverse effect. You should never combine those two options without knowing exactly what you're doing.

It was a simple upgrade, not a minor or major upgrade.

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.1R/

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/15.1ISSUES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCtFeukJs-E

Video, fifteen minutes. Cross-posted from r/freebsd,

FreeBSD was only a small part of the chat. In the greater part, Kris Moore discussed, amongst other things:

• community
• ZFS
• total cost of ownership.

Meet the TrueNAS Leadership Team | Open Enterprise Storage

https://codeberg.org/thesaigoneer/pages/src/branch/main/FreeBSD and Plasma 6 install - a log

@thesaigoneer@social.linux.pizza wrote:

I got triggered to revive my description on how to get a KDE Wayland session on FreeBSD up and running. …

From line 105 onwards it handles the Big K and how to run a Wayland session. This is what you'll end up with:

FreeBSD Foundation Laptop Update:

• https://freebsdfoundation.github.io/proj-laptop/monthly-updates/2026-04 or
• https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/blob/main/monthly-updates/2026-04.md

Cross-post: https://redd.it/1tc70zr

My liferaft has a name: Pickle. If you recognise the name, you might already know
a little about
me.

People's
hidden
histories

… please tell me yours.

#SilentSunday so here,
today
I'll say
no more.

Snippets, instead,
weeks and months ahead.

Peace

---

@fuzzy@beige.party @grahamperrin

Why the Best Systems Are the Ones You Don't Notice

FreeBSD, from philosophy to practice.

https://vivianvoss.net/print/integrated-by-design

From Integrated by Design — Launch Day (23rd April):

… Five months of writing. Three weeks of final proofs. Then the last 72 hours, dedicated entirely to problems one does not anticipate. In the interest of transparency, and in the hope that it spares somebody else a week of the same, here are the four of them. …

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928554 – please note the author's comments.

Vivian Voss — System Architect & Software Developer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vvoss/

---

Also in Reddit: https://redd.it/1t1u1os

https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/06/18/freebsd-151-lands-but-desktop-dabblers-still-have-to-draw-their-own-gui/5257681

@lproven@social.vivaldi.net

Better laptop sleep and Wi-Fi support make the beastie more portable-friendly, but getting beyond the shell remains a DIY job

Tested with a Core i5-based ThinkPad X220.

Surprisingly:

… The handy optional desktop-installer script is still available, but as far as we can tell, it hasn't been updated for version 15.1 yet. In our testing, it couldn't correctly install a working desktop, and whatever desktop we tried, it failed without giving any visible error. …

Worked around, through manual installation of software, but I'm surprised that it happened.

Cross-post: r/freebsd

I built a native ambient sound generator … : r/freebsd

https://github.com/elytraVIII/ElytAmbience

a native ambient sound generator built for the BSD desktop. It is a high-performance rewrite of the popular Blanket application, specifically optimized for FreeBSD and GhostBSD.

On an old train, listening to birdsong. Perfect.

The Foundation's announcement:

• https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/call-for-testing-introducing-the-laptop-integration-testing-project/

Thanks to u/anh0516:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1seej1t/call_for_testing_introducing_the_laptop/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1seei3y/freebsd_call_for_testing_introducing_the_laptop/

In The FreeBSD Forums, maybe not open to discussion:

• https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/102265/

https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2026-04-11-20-years-on-AWS-and-never-not-my-job.html

I created my first AWS account at 10:31 PM on April 10th, 2006. I had seen the announcement of Amazon S3 and had been thinking vaguely about the problem of secure backups — even though I didn't start Tarsnap until several months later — and the idea of an online storage service appealed to me. The fact that it was a web service made it even more appealing; I had been building web services since 1998, …

– 24–30 minutes reading time, according to Firefox. Time well spent, IMHO, especially with security vulnerabilities for various operating systems recently in a spotlight.

Also: to Mastodon @cperciva@mastodon.social @stefano and to Lobsters.

---

Background: Colin Percival was, for many years, the FreeBSD Security Officer. He is now the FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead. You can show your appreciation for today's blog post at his shares in Reddit, in Hacker News, or in LinkedIn.

A thought: AWS has its heroes. Tarsnap has given 2^18 dollars to open source – for this, and for what's described in today's blog post, it's probably fair to describe Colin as a hero in more ways than one.

OK, thanks, that looks good:

• here in Billboard
• in my NLI view of your original (pictured below).

New balls, please @tionisla.

Posted by Luis Emanuel to r/BSD:

I daily-drive Linux at work and FreeBSD on my personal ThinkPads (T480 & P52 currently). Both laptops and both operating systems, every day. I'm the kind of person who reads freebsd-update output and Phoronix benchmarks in the same hour.

Recently saw the "is FreeBSD really that goated" thread and it brought back the timeline of my own journey. Started with a rough — call it version 0.9 — build that barely had X11 working, evolved through five iterations, landed on something I'd call "production-stable personal desktop" around version 2.0 on FreeBSD 15.0 with a heavily customized MATE, ZFS boot environments, BastilleBSD jails for microservices, WireGuard tunnels and PF.

If I could send a packet back in time to my earlier self, here's what I'd put in the payload:

…

Question for this sub

What's the one thing you wish someone had told you in your first year on FreeBSD?

I suspect we'll generate a better FAQ in this thread than the wiki currently has.

---

Yesterday from the same author:

• The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Two Systems on My Desk | The FreeBSD Forums

Additional coverage of the roadmap: FreeBSD Laptop Project Hopes To Port Newer Linux Graphics Drivers This Year - Phoronix

This is not an invitation to introduce yourselves here

The FreeBSD Forums has a single post for people to introduce themselves: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/68079/. Forty pages long.

BSD Cafe Billboard could have an Introductions category, within the lounge.

Then, move the first introduction to the new category; posts from other people can follow …

Recently posted to Artificial Intelligence Made Simple by Devansh:

• Anthropic's Claude Mythos Launch Is Built on Misinformation

He misinforms his readers:

… Nicholas Carlini published a 15-round reverse shell exploit here, …

– false. Devansh:

• links to the post-CVE work by Calif
• misattributes the work to Carlini.

Carlini used Claude Mythos before publication of CVE-2026-4747. The work by Anthropic is properly described here:

• Claude Mythos Preview \ red.anthropic.com (2026-04-07)

– unfortunately, not referenced at https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-4747.

---

As a direct consequence of misinformation by Devansh, we have a somewhat misleading article by Jessica Lyons:

• Anthropic Mythos shaping up as nothingburger • The Register

– and so on, and (sigh) I see the word "slop" in response to the article …

---

Credit to @bigsneakyduck for observing the mistake in Substack.

#AI

You are a fan of one or more BSD os. Is that BSD (doesn't matter which one) your daily driver, your primary OS on your main computer?

A three-day poll by @darth@silversword.online:

• https://silversword.online/@darth/116404948062081788

If a toot in Mastodon is a response to a federated post from NodeBB: does the response appear in NodeBB?

Et cetera.

Ping to @radio_azureus@ioc.exchange Radio_Azureus@ioc.exchange