Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2023 16:40:56 -0800 From: "Dan Mahoney (Ports)" <freebsd@gushi.org> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: ZFS upgrade loader actions -- is it possible to check before reboot if your system will reboot cleanly? Message-ID: <F972B2CC-62E3-4724-B3ED-752CDA301B9C@gushi.org>
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I was reading a couple recent threads (one about upgrading from 13.2 to = 14) and another more virtiolic thread about how terrible, awful, no-good = our documentation is. I don=E2=80=99t agree with this. =20 I shied away from Linux for years because of nonfunctional man pages, or = man pages that someone bothered to write, but then to only point to a = postscript file on disk, or to point at an =E2=80=9Cinfo=E2=80=9D file. = I mused regularly that it=E2=80=99s sad that =E2=80=9CThe Linux = Documentation Project=E2=80=9D website is in fact a whole different = website from =E2=80=9CThe Linux Project=E2=80=9D=E2=80=A6or any hundred = of Linux Projects. =20 Anyway, both threads talked about zpool upgrades and needing to update = your bootloader. I was recently bitten by this, requiring my datacenter = to put a physical disc in a drive for me to recover from. (And I even = had to ship them a USB cdrom drive =E2=80=94 don=E2=80=99t get me = started on supermicro=E2=80=99s virtual media implementation. it=E2=80=99= s bad). I understand that printing the raw commands to upgrade your boot loader = (and/or your pmbr) as part of the output of a successful =E2=80=9Czpool = upgrade=E2=80=9D is probably a bad idea, as the commands are not = one-size-fits-all, but having a special manpage for this process, = specifically (and having zpool upgrade point at that page) might be = useful.=20 If the handbook doesn=E2=80=99t say something about this process, then = it should as well. But also, it would be really nice to be able to poll the version of the = various components that are actually installed on the system (the boot = loader, and even the pmbr if you have one) and see if they=E2=80=99re = current and can support the current version of your boot pool. I don=E2=80=99t know if this is possible. Gpart bootcode, for example, = only has a command to *install* the bootcode, not read it back. Since = the loader and the mbr are tiny, highly optimized pieces of code, I = don=E2=80=99t know if there are any strings that can be examined to see = if they match the running system. But if the tools don=E2=80=99t exist, = they should =E2=80=94 even absent any version strings, if nothing else, = gpart bootcode should be able to non-intrusively compare a file with the = already existing one. Does anyone know for sure? -Dan=
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