Call for testers - new CPU microcode update plugins

[OPNenthu]

It's good that this will be taken to the FreeBSD maintainers as feedback because although the actual commands to update the bootloader are simple, arriving at the correct ones requires some arcane knowledge.  It's not well documented.  The FreeBSD handbook has barely one sentence about it and links out to various man pages.  Good luck to any beginners.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

In case you are interested in all the details: https://klarasystems.com/articles/the-freebsd-boot-process/

Don't miss the "Additional Resources" section ;-)

[bamf]

I don't really get it yet. Do I need to do something before I upgrade?

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root@OPNsense:~ # zpool status
  pool: zroot
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 00:10:32 with 0 errors on Sun Nov 23 00:59:47 2025
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        zroot       ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            nda0p4  ONLINE       0     0     0
            nda1p4  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

Code Select Expand

root@OPNsense:~ # file /boot/loader.efi
/boot/loader.efi: PE32+ executable for EFI (application), x86-64, 10 sections

root@OPNsense:~ # md5sum /boot/loader.efi
2f8e91724d3927826909c128c27efa16  /boot/loader.efi

root@OPNsense:~ # file /boot/efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi
/boot/efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi: PE32+ executable for EFI (application), x86-64, 10 sections

root@OPNsense:~ # md5sum /boot/efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi
18ccc82fd9eeaa815f0ff1194dd36b4a  /boot/efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi

root@OPNsense:~ # file /boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi
/boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi: PE32+ executable for EFI (application), x86-64, 10 sections

root@OPNsense:~ # md5sum /boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi
18ccc82fd9eeaa815f0ff1194dd36b4a  /boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi

root@OPNsense:~ # strings /boot/efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi | grep -i "FreeBSD"
FreeBSD vinum
FreeBSD boot
freebsd
FreeBSD UFS
Can't fetch FreeBSD::%s we know is there
freebsd:nvstore
/efi/freebsd/loader.env
FreeBSD Loader
FreeBSD
freebsd:bootonce
FreeBSD ZFS
Can't allocate %d bytes to fetch FreeBSD::%s env var
No FreeBSD kernel provided, aborting
FreeBSD swap
org.freebsd:zstd_compress
DFreeBSD/amd64 EFI loader, Revision 1.1

root@OPNsense:~ # strings /boot/loader.efi | grep -i "FreeBSD"
FreeBSD vinum
FreeBSD boot
freebsd
FreeBSD UFS
Can't fetch FreeBSD::%s we know is there
freebsd:nvstore
/efi/freebsd/loader.env
FreeBSD Loader
FreeBSD
freebsd:bootonce
FreeBSD ZFS
Can't allocate %d bytes to fetch FreeBSD::%s env var
No FreeBSD kernel provided, aborting
FreeBSD swap
org.freebsd:zstd_compress
DFreeBSD/amd64 EFI loader, Revision 3.0

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Do you have one of the os-cpu-microcode-* plugins installed? If yes, you should

- uninstall it
- then perform the upgrade to 27.6
- then after the upgrade update your boot loader
- then reinstall the plugin