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Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 17:43:06 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com>
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To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, mike@skew.org
In-Reply-To: <201205032152.q43LqNZO004512@chilled.skew.org>
Cc: 
Subject: Re: freebsd-update not updating reported patchlevel
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Mike Brown <mike@skew.org> wrote;
> I installed 8.2-RELEASE when it was new, and have been just using 
> freebsd-update since then. I run freebsd-update whenever there are new 
> critical patches. But for some reason, my system's reported patchlevel number 
> hasn't updated since p3.

[sneck]

> But 'uname -r' continues to return "8.2-RELEASE-p3". Rebooting doesn't help. 
> Is there something I need to do in order to bump the reported patchlevel? I 
> thought this was supposed to happen automatically, since I didn't have to do 
> anything to get it up to -p3.

Amazingly, this very question was covered on this list within the last few
hours.   <grin>

Executive summary:
the kernel ID string that uname reports changes only when the -kernel- is
changed.

-p4, -p5, -p6, and -p7. have -not- involved any changes to the kernel.
hence the ID string has stayed at '-p3'.

While this _is_ counter-intuitive, it does make sense to avoid pushing a
new k ernel out, and/or forcing an admin to rebuild a custom kernel, when
the -only- change would be to the ID string.