Summary

OpenBSD 51st release on 14 Oct 2021 has arrived at 7.0✨

This post shows how to upgrade OpenBSD 6.9 to 7.0.

Tutorial

Here is a step-by-step guide for the upgrade with a set of the commands to run.

1. Pre-upgrade
2. Upgrade
3. Post-upgrade
4. Reboot
5. Apply syspatch and update packages
6. Remove old files
7. Special packages
8. Reboot

These steps are based on the official upgrade tutorial.

1. Pre-upgrade

(Reference) (Relevant section in official tutorial)

Validate available disk size

/usr should be greater than 1.1GB.

$ df -h
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
(...)
/dev/sd1x      2.9G    1.4G    1.4G    50%    /usr

Validate it's compatible with the current usage

Check: Configuration and syntax changes and Special packages.

2. Upgrade

Is there any problem left to upgrade? Have you already taken necessary backups?
If ready, let's just run the command! (Caution: It is not able to be stopped on the way once run.)

$ doas sysupgrade

It will print like this:

Fetching from https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.0/amd64/
SHA256.sig   100% |**************************************************|  2144       00:00    
Signature Verified
INSTALL.amd64 100% |*************************************************| 43523       00:00    
base70.tgz   100% |**************************************************|   302 MB    00:27    
bsd          100% |**************************************************| 21090 KB    00:06    
bsd.mp       100% |**************************************************| 21181 KB    00:09    
bsd.rd       100% |**************************************************|  4109 KB    00:01    
comp70.tgz   100% |**************************************************| 73002 KB    00:18    
game70.tgz   100% |**************************************************|  2743 KB    00:01    
man70.tgz    100% |**************************************************|  7580 KB    00:02    
xbase70.tgz  100% |**************************************************| 54408 KB    00:09    
xfont70.tgz  100% |**************************************************| 22965 KB    00:07    
xserv70.tgz  100% |**************************************************| 19659 KB    00:04    
xshare70.tgz 100% |**************************************************|  4494 KB    00:02    
Verifying sets.
Fetching updated firmware.
intel-firmware-20210216v0->20210608v0: ok
vmm-firmware-1.11.0p3->1.14.0: ok
Read shared items: ok
Upgrading.

It reboots the machine automatically, and the sysupgrade process continues.

Then sysmerge is run automatically, too. What I got was:

--- /etc/login.conf unhandled, re-run sysmerge to merge the new version
--- /etc/ssh/sshd_config unhandled, re-run sysmerge to merge the new version

After all, you will see the login message including "OpenBSD 7.0 (GENERIC)".

3. Post-upgrade

3-1. sysmerge

$ doas sysmerge

rc.sysmerge ran automatically in the previous process as shown. But running this command may be necessary.
It sometimes requires manually merging conf files such as:

• /etc/ssh/sshd_config
• /etc/login.conf

In each merging, these options (and more) are shown:

• d: to preserve current file.
• i: to overwrite with new file.
• m: to merge these two files manually.

At each difference in m merge mode, type l means to choose left diff and r to choose right diff. Additionally, eb is available to "edit both diffs concatenated". After editing all to merge, confirmation will be shown saying "===> How should I deal with the merged file? [Leave it for later] e
editing merged file...". Type i "to install the merged file".

4. Reboot

Reboot might be enough only once later. Do reboot here, however, because the OS has been upgraded.

$ doas reboot

5. Apply syspatch and update packages

The two tasks below are usual just in order to update the system, too.

5-1. syspatch

syspatch is an important command to install binary patches officially provided by OpenBSD successively as found to be needed.

Well, sysupgrade runs syspatch in the process. Therefore, it must not be necessary to run it manually here:

$ # must be skippable:
$ # doas syspatch

5-2. Update packages

Update the packages installed in the machine.

$ doas pkg_add -u

Be careful to read the output which may tell there are some important changes or tasks to do.

6. Remove old files

The official tutorial describes Files to remove:

$ doas rm -f /usr/X11R6/lib/libdmx.* \
      /usr/X11R6/include/X11/extensions/dmxext.h \
      /usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig/dmx.pc \
      /usr/X11R6/man/man3/DMX*.3

7. Special packages

Check Special packages in the official tutorial. You may use some of:

• net/freeradius

8. Reboot

Almost done!

$ doas reboot

That's it. Hope the new system works fine :)

With gratitude to the OpenBSD project and community.