freebsd-update: “/usr/sbin/freebsd-update: cannot open files/.gz: No such file or directory”

This morning, I finally updated my web server to FreeBSD 10.2-p6 using freebsd-update. Normally I like freebsd-update, but this morning it decided to be cranky.

As usual, it was cranky because I didn’t know what I was doing.

First, I should say that I don’t need to update my hosts that often. If there’s, say, a mountd(8) security advisory, I don’t bother. And when I ran bunches of FreeBSD boxes, I ran freebsd-update through ansible.

This means I’m not terribly familiar with the output.

So, I run:

# freebsd-update -F -r 10.2-RELEASE upgrade

There’s the usual “downloading metadata” messages, then a bunch of stuff on updating patches.

I then get presented with an /etc/mail/sendmail.cf diff, saying some of the innards of that file has changed. Fine.

Then I get:

The following file will be removed, as it no longer exists in
FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE: /etc/ntp.conf
Does this look reasonable (y/n)?

Wait… FreeBSD dropped /etc/ntp.conf? What, did they drop ntpd? Who do they think they are, OpenBSD? I’m sure that’s in the release notes, had I bothered to read the release notes. Fine, I’ll install openntpd from packages after the upgrade. No biggie. But I want /etc/ntp.conf to stick around, as I have custom twiddles in there. I think. It’s been a while.

So I answer n. Just like I would with mergemaster.

And freebsd-update ends.

Fine. That’s all the updates, right? I saw stuff download. I then do:

# freebsd-update install
No updates are available to install.
Run '/usr/sbin/freebsd-update fetch' first.

What fresh hell is this? I saw all sorts of stuff download!

I rerun the freebsd-update command, and this time I notice in the output:

/usr/sbin/freebsd-update: cannot open files/.gz: No such file or directory

Something’s missing.

I add -F, to say “hey, re-download everything.”

Same result.

Eventually, I let freebsd-update take /etc/ntp.conf. The upgrade kept running after that, downloading a bunch more stuff and finally telling me to reboot and run freebsd-update install.

The takeaways here are:

1) freebsd-update is not mergemaster. Answering n anywhere makes the update stop before it’s finished.
2) Read the release notes.

BTW, ntpd is still part of FreeBSD 10.2. I don’t know why the update wanted to blow away my ntp.conf rather than point out any diffs.

One Reply to “freebsd-update: “/usr/sbin/freebsd-update: cannot open files/.gz: No such file or directory””

  1. Hi Michael,

    Apologies for the off-topic comment. I noticed another one of your readers has left a similar comment but looks like that thread is closed now.

    Would it be possible to update your Sudo Mastery and SSH Mastery books to use monospaced fonts for code snippets on the Kindle apps for iOS (and probably Android too)?

    Please have a look at http://imgur.com/bkFmsuZ to see what I mean.

    As you can see, "%:Domains Admins" ALL = ALL is not using a monospaced font.

    I am using Kindle 4.12.1 on an old iPad 4.

    Thanks in advance,
    Kumar

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