freebsd-update fails on systems before 9.0

Fleximus Blog

2014-02-20 Felix Ehlers

You want to upgrade your FreeBSD system before 9.0 through freebsd-update and it fails, showing the following error message:

The update metadata is correctly signed, but
failed an integrity check.
Cowardly refusing to proceed any further.

The problem lies in a broken version of freebsd-update(8) which got fixed in FreeBSD 9.0-RC1. To fix your version simply run the following command:

bsdbox# sed -i '' -e 's/=_/=%@_/' /usr/sbin/freebsd-update

For a full reference read the official FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 announcement. ■