Re: Proposal: Improve BE naming convention in freebsd-update install

On 5/25/26 16:51, vermaden wrote:
>
> To understand 'default' name choose you will have to move back in time 
> to 2012 when I implemented *beadm(8)* for FreeBSD:
>
> - https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/howto-freebsd-zfs-madness.31662/
>
> The *pool/ROOT/default *was back then (and probably is still now) used 
> by default on Solaris/Illumos - so I just recreated that - along with 
> *beadm(8) *tool - its parameters and messages.
>
> Of course it can be changed - right now I use something like that 
> personally:
>
> f25 vermaden ~ %*beadm list*
> BE            Active Mountpoint  Space Created
> 14.4          NR     /           29.3G 2026-03-01 11:03
> 14.4.safe.OLD -      -            7.3G 2026-05-08 01:19
> 14.4.safe     -      -            1.6G 2026-05-18 20:48
> 15.0          -      -           12.7G 2026-05-21 12:24

Thank you for the valuable responses.

To clarify my proposal: I was not suggesting a naming convention for 
users to follow manually. The intent was that freebsd-update itself 
automatically renames the current BE to "HEAD" after each install. This 
guarantees that "HEAD" always refers to the latest state managed by 
freebsd-update, without any user intervention.

I should be transparent that I was personally misled by the 
automatically generated BE names and lost considerable time as a result. 
The BE name said "p8" but the system was actually running "p9". The 
snapshot with the newer timestamp turned out to be the older state. I 
suspect other users have fallen into the same trap.

I actively promote FreeBSD to Japanese users through social media, and 
one of my key messages is that FreeBSD with ZFS and Boot Environments 
allows safe and confident system updates. This proposal comes from a 
wish to make that experience better for users who are new to FreeBSD.

If it does not conflict with established conventions, I would be 
grateful if this could be reconsidered. And even if the current behavior 
remains unchanged, I am thankful that the topic was worth discussing.

Thank you for the links as well. I will read them carefully.

Takashi