Re: Recommended upgrade procedure to avoid drm-kmod panic on 15.1-RELEASE

Thank you for the kind and thoughtful advice.

You make a fair point about the definition of "successfully" - I had 
only confirmed that the immediate upgrade completed without a panic, not 
that the system would behave normally with freebsd-update going forward. 
I will keep an eye on this and report back if I run into any issues with 
future freebsd-update runs.

I appreciate you confirming that avoiding the freebsd-update/pkgbase mix 
is the right approach for now. I will continue to treat the -oOSVERSION 
workaround as exactly that - a workaround, not a documented or fully 
supported procedure - when I write about this.

Given everything discussed in this thread, it seems that for 
freebsd-update users, the safest approach at this point is the 
traditional one: disable the affected kld_list entries and display 
manager, complete the upgrade, then rebuild the kmods from ports. This 
avoids mixing freebsd-update with any pkgbase-style repository selection.

That said, I have to say this is not a comfortable situation for less 
experienced desktop users. Disabling drivers, rebuilding from ports, and 
understanding the distinction between freebsd-update and pkgbase are all 
things that require a fair amount of FreeBSD-specific knowledge. I hope 
this can be improved over time, whether through better documentation or 
through pkgbase eventually handling kmods transparently once it matures.

Thank you again for your time and detailed explanations throughout this 
thread.

Best regards

Takashi Shimizu