2.7.2 to 2.8 beta Upgrade Fails [Solved]

artenpie

I had 2.7.2 installed from memstick, bare metal, fully patched, ran fine. I attempted an online upgrade to 2.8 beta from my browser, and everything seemed fine - here is the tail end of the upgrade log:

[1/1] Upgrading pfSense-kernel-pfSense from 2.7.2 to 2.8.0.b.20250429.1327...
[1/1] Extracting pfSense-kernel-pfSense-2.8.0.b.20250429.1327: .......... done
===> Keeping a copy of current kernel in /boot/kernel.old
>>> Removing unnecessary packages...done.
>>> Unlocking package pkg...done.
>>> Upgrading pkg...done.
>>> Upgrading boot code...
System Configuration

Architecture: amd64
Boot Devices: /dev/ada0
 Boot Method: uefi
  Filesystem: zfs
    Platform: unknown hardware


Updating boot code...

/usr/local/sbin/../libexec/install-boot.sh -b auto -f zfs -s gpt -u ada0
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 2 ada0
partcode written to ada0p2
bootcode written to ada0
ESP /dev/ada0p1 mounted on /tmp/stand-test.qimFG7
264784KB space remaining on ESP: renaming old bootx64.efi file /efi/boot/bootx64.efi /efi/boot/bootx64-old.efi
264784KB space remaining on ESP: renaming old loader.efi file /etc/freebsd/loader.efi /etc/freebsd/loader-old.efi
Copying loader.efi to /EFI/freebsd on ESP
Creating UEFI boot entry for FreeBSD
Marking UEFI boot entry 0000 active
Copying bootx64.efi to /efi/boot on ESP
Unmounting and cleaning up temporary mount point
Finished updating ESP

Done.
System is going to be upgraded.  Rebooting in 10 seconds.
Success

During the reboot, the system does not finish rebooting (no startup be-boo-beep). I waited over 10 minutes, and when it didn't reboot, I pressed the front panel power button once and the system did a graceful shutdown.

Then I connected a monitor and keyboard to watch the boot, and the boot stopped at this line:

Dual Console: Video Primary, Serial Secondary

It froze there for many minutes, so I hit the Return key a few times and (as I recall) it seemed to reboot, only to show an error something like this:

Can't find /boot/zfsloader
Can't find /boot/loader
Can't find /boot/kernel/kernel

I tried 3 times on 3 different SATA drives, same results.

I'm wondering, are others seeing the same issue?

BTW, installing 2.8 beta using the online Netgate installer works fine.

artenpie

Responding to myself here. It was a case of user error - I was simply too impatient.

I ran the same upgrade on a different system where I could watch the upgrade process on a console (an APU). I saw that after the browser session said "Success" and the system reboots, then starts a complete reinstallation, some steps taking considerable time (like "Skipping untrusted certificates"). At the end of that process, another reboot, and success!

So lesson learned - have patience. Lots of it.