FREEBSD-UPDATE.CONF(5)

NAME
freebsd-update.conf - configuration file for freebsd-update(8)

DESCRIPTION
The freebsd-update.conf file controls the behaviour of the freebsd-update(8) utility. The file contains lines consisting of a case-sensitive option name and zero or more parameters. Empty lines and any part of a line following a ‘#’ character are ignored. Unless stated otherwise, specifying an option multiple times is an error.

The possible options and their meanings are as follows:

AllowAdd
    The single parameter following this keyword must be “yes” or “no” and specifies whether freebsd-update(8) is allowed to create new files, directories, and symlinks if these are part of updates downloaded. Note that freebsd-update(8) will not re-add files which have been deleted from a FreeBSD installation unless those files were previously added as part of an update.

AllowDelete
    The single parameter following this keyword must be “yes” or “no” and specifies whether freebsd-update(8) is allowed to delete files, directories, and symlinks as part of updates downloaded.

BackupKernel
    The single parameter following this keyword must be “yes” or “no” and specifies whether freebsd-update(8) will create a backup of the old kernel before installing a new kernel. This backup kernel can be used to recover a system where the newly installed kernel somehow did not work. Note that the backup kernel is not reverted to its original state by the freebsd-update(8) rollback command.

BackupKernelDir
    This keyword sets the directory which is used to store a backup kernel, if the BackupKernel feature is enabled. If the directory already exist, and it was not created by freebsd-update(8), the directory is skipped. In the case of the primary directory name not being usable, a number starting with ‘1’ is appended to the directory name. Like with the primary directory name, the constructed directory name is only used if the path name does not exist, or if the directory was previously created by freebsd-update(8). If the constructed directory still exist the appended number is incremented with 1 and the directory search process restarted. Should the number increment go above 9, freebsd-update(8) will abort.

BackupKernelSymbolFiles
    The single parameter following this keyword must be “yes” or “no” and specifies whether freebsd-update(8) will also backup kernel symbol files, if they exist. The kernel symbol files takes up a lot of disk space and are not needed for recovery purposes. If the symbol files are needed, after recovering a system using the backup kernel, the freebsd-update(8) rollback command will recreate the symbol files along with the old kernel.

Components
    The parameters following this keyword are the components or sub-components of FreeBSD which will be updated. The components are “src” (source code), “world” (non-kernel binaries), and “kernel”; the sub-components are the individual distribution sets generated as part of the release process (e.g., “src/base”, “src/sys”, “world/base”, “world/catpages”, “kernel/smp”). Note that prior to FreeBSD 6.1, the “kernel” component was distributed as part of “world/base”.

    This option can be specified multiple times, and the parameters accumulate.

CreateBootEnv
    The single parameter following this keyword must be “yes” or “no” and specifies whether freebsd-update(8) will create a new boot environment using bectl(8) when installing patches.

    The name of the new boot environment consists of the current FreeBSD version:

        freebsd-version -ku | sort -V | tail -n 1

    and a timestamp:

        date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S"

    separated by a single dash, e.g.:

        13.0-RELEASE-p7_2022-02-16_141502

    freebsd-update(8) does not attempt to create a boot environment if any of the following applies:

    -   ZFS is not used.
    -   The ZFS root is not set up for boot environments (see the check command of bectl(8) for details).
    -   freebsd-update(8) is running in a jail(8).
    -   freebsd-update(8) is updating a root directory selected via the basedir (-b) or jail (-j) flags.

IDSIgnorePaths
    The parameters following this keyword are regular expressions; paths which start with a string matching one of these regular expressions will be ignored by freebsd-update(8) IDS.

    This option can be specified multiple times, and the parameters accumulate.

IgnorePaths
    The parameters following this keyword are regular expressions; updates to paths which start with a string matching one of these regular expressions will be ignored.

    This option can be specified multiple times, and the parameters accumulate.

KeepModifiedMetadata
    The single parameter following this keyword must be “yes” or “no” and specifies whether freebsd-update(8) should keep existing file ownership, permissions, and flags when installing updates if these have been modified locally.

KeyPrint
    The single parameter following this keyword is the SHA256 hash of the RSA key which will be trusted to sign updates.

MailTo
    The single parameter following this keyword is the address to which cron(8) output will be mailed.

MergeChanges
    The parameters following this keyword are regular expressions; updates to paths which start with a string matching one of these regular expressions will be merged with local modifications.

    This option can be specified multiple times, and the parameters accumulate.

ServerName
    The single parameter following this keyword is the name of the server or server pool from which updates will be downloaded.

StrictComponents
    The single parameter following this keyword must be “yes” or “no” and specifies whether freebsd-update(8) should interpret the list of components of FreeBSD specified via the Components option strictly as a list of components installed which should be upgraded when the upgrade command is used ("yes"), or merely as a list of components which might be installed, of which freebsd-update(8) should identify which in fact are present ("no").

UpdateIfUnmodified
    The parameters following this keyword are regular expressions; updates to paths which start with a string matching one of these regular expressions will be ignored if the files have been modified locally (unless they are merged — see the MergeChanges option).

    This option can be specified multiple times, and the parameters accumulate.

WorkDir
    The single parameter following this keyword is the directory in which temporary files and downloaded updates will be stored.

FILES

/etc/freebsd-update.conf
    Default location of the freebsd-update(8) configuration file.

SEE ALSO
sha256(1), bectl(8), freebsd-update(8)

AUTHORS
Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org>