Upgrading NetBSD from 11.0 to 11.1

A first-time NetBSD upgrade took an amd64 system from 11.0 to 11.1 using the in-place sysupgrade utility. NetBSD offers this approach as an alternative to booting installation media and running sysinst; the author’s research suggested sysinst is preferable for major-version jumps, while sysupgrade is a convenient choice for smaller upgrades. After installing sysupgrade with pkgin, the upgrade command fetched and unpacked the 11.1 kernel and system sets for the machine, then prompted for review and merging of configuration changes. Only a few files, including passwd and sshd_config, required manual attention, and the displayed differences made merging straightforward.

One post-upgrade check failed: opensslcertsrehash. The fix was to remove the legacy certificate cache under /etc/openssl/certs, rebuild the certificate database with certctl rehash, and confirm that certificates appeared in certctl list. Rerunning the postinstall fix for opensslcertsrehash then passed; sysupgrade clean completed the cleanup before rebooting. A final packaging detail is to update /usr/pkg/etc/pkgin/repositories.conf so pkgin uses the NetBSD 11.1 repositories. The account presents the upgrade as a successful, manageable process, while identifying certificate-cache cleanup as the sole hiccup and documenting the commands needed to resolve it.