© 2026 Gregory D. Weber
Activities of March 16, 2026. Published March 16, 2026.
For several days now I’ve been awaiting an update to FreeBSD to fix
vulnerabilities reported in the nightly security run. I used to use
freebsd-update fetch install, but that was slow (several
seconds wait), so I switched to checking for updates with
freebsd-update updatesready. It is significantly
faster.
But today, although freebsd-update updatesready told me
there were no updates available, I happened to run
freebsd-update fetch install in addition, and it
did fetch and install the updates I had been waiting for.
root@gdweber:~ # freebsd-update updatesready
src component not installed, skipped
No updates are available to install.
root@gdweber:~ # freebsd-update fetch install
src component not installed, skipped
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 14.3-RELEASE from update1.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 2 metadata patches.. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Preparing to download files... done.
Fetching 104 patches.....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100.. done.
Applying patches... done.
The following files will be updated as part of updating to
14.3-RELEASE-p9:etc.
A closer look at man freebsd-update shows me that
updatesready will “Check if there are fetched updates ready
to install.” Note the word “fetched”. So if there are updates available
(therefore in some sense “ready”), but not fetched, it will
answer “No updates available to install” and return exit code 2.
It pays to read the fine print!