I just upgraded my servers from FreeBSD 6.2 to 6.3 (even though FreeBSD 7.0 will be here any day). Here are the steps to upgrade, make sure to backup!

# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

Downloading and verifying the digital signature for the tarball (signed by the FreeBSD Security Officer’s PGP key) is highly recommended.# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc

# gpg –verify freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

The new freebsd-update(8) can then be extracted and run as follows:# tar -xf freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -r 6.3-RELEASE upgrade

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.# shutdown -r now

Finally, freebsd-update.sh needs to be run one more time to install the new userland components, and the system needs to be rebooted one last time:# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

# shutdown -r now

For more information, see:http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2007-11-10-freebsd-minor-version-upgrade.html