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<h2 id=OpenBSD>
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<i>Open</i><b>BSD</b></a>
-stable
</h2>

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<h3 id="whatis">What is the -stable Branch?</h3>

<p>
The -stable branch is one of OpenBSD's three
<a href="faq/faq5.html#Flavors">flavors</a>.
It consists of the release and <a href="errata.html">errata</a> patches.
More precisely:

<ul>
  <li>Errata entries are made for bugs which affect many people.
  <li>Other patches may be merged into -stable if they affect a few
      people in drastic ways.
  <li>New or changed functionality, hardware support or APIs will <i>not</i> be
      merged.
</ul>

<p>
This page describes how to follow the -stable branch via CVS and building
from source.
If you're running a release on amd64, i386, or arm64, you can also
use the <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/syspatch">syspatch(8)</a> utility to
upgrade any files in need of security or reliability fixes with binary updates.
More information can be found <a href="faq/faq10.html#Patches">here</a>.

<h3 id="getting">Getting -stable Source Code</h3>

<p>
To obtain the -stable tree for a particular release of OpenBSD, you can
<a href="anoncvs.html#updating">update</a> on top of a pre-existing source tree
or you can <a href="anoncvs.html#getting">check out</a> a fresh source tree from
an <a href="anoncvs.html">AnonCVS</a> server.

<p>
Do not attempt to go from one release to another via source.
Instead, please follow the <a href="faq/upgrade77.html">upgrade guide</a> for
the release before compiling -stable.

<h3 id="building">Building OpenBSD -stable</h3>

<p>
Details on building OpenBSD from source are provided in steps 2 and 3 of the
<a href="https://man.openbsd.org/release">release(8)</a> manual.
There is also an FAQ on <a href="faq/faq5.html">building the system</a>.
If you have a number of machines to keep on the -stable branch, you may
wish to <a href="faq/faq5.html#Release">make a release</a>.

<h4>Rebuild the kernel and reboot</h4>

<p>
Replace <code>GENERIC.MP</code> with <code>GENERIC</code> for
single-core processor systems.

<pre class="cmdbox">
# <b>cd /sys/arch/$(machine)/compile/GENERIC.MP</b>
# <b>make obj</b>
# <b>make config</b>
# <b>make && make install</b>
# <b>reboot</b>
</pre>

<p>
If your system has trouble booting the new kernel, you can easily go back
and reboot from the old kernel, now called <code>obsd</code>.

<h4>Rebuild the userland</h4>

<pre class="cmdbox">
# <b>rm -rf /usr/obj/*</b>
# <b>cd /usr/src</b>
# <b>make obj && make build</b>
</pre>