While logging into the box, it politely reminded me that FreeBSD 12.2 will be going EOS soon and to upgrade within the next 2 months. “No Problem” I thought, as this is mostly a test rig and hobby box I normally go for the most recent. However this box is now rather long in the tooth and only a dual core M86 ThinkStation that was originally built on FreeBSD 10.1 I think and already been thru several updates and upgrades.
The merging process always seems to be a bit of a dark art and requires a google of mastering VI to edit and save the resultant files. I always seem to end up with a couple of orphaned .SO files too, so some libraries don’t work. This then provides me hours of fun working out which package or port didn’t actually build properly in the upgrade process and attempting to rebuild again via ports. More by Trial and Error I get the. necessary files working and limp on for another year.
So, currently trying to decide if to go the latest and greatest v13 or just take the v12.3 release that is still only in RC editions or wait until 12.3 is out proper. Current thinking is 12.3 General Availability release and use the time to re-investigate AWS and Azure FreeBSD offerings and create a fresh image in the cloud on FB13 and move my dabbling to there.