Very unlikely. As mentioned all the current work is on FreeBSD main builds. Currently that's 14.

Steve

@stepinsky you would need to edit the subject (ie your first post) then you can edit that and add a tag of solved, etc.

Note: simply changing the terminal settings to send ^H instead of BKSP is not a universal fix.

For example, when I did this (iTerm2) I noticed that when ssh'ing to a new host and getting the prompt to accept/reject host keys, I can no longer backspace properly. Instead of deleting, it prints the literal ^H

32683b3b-8f19-4633-a540-f7628ecb76f9-image.png

Manually forcing reinstall of pfSense-kernel-pfSense-2.6.0.pkg should get you onto the correct kernel after a reboot. But the kernel file you have already looks correct.
Once you do that can you ever be 100% confident of the install?
If reinstalling is very inconvenient then it's probably worth trying first but reinstalling and restoring a config is usually quick and easy.
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/restore-during-install.html

Steve

As always is the case, I resolved this minutes after posting.
It's quite an obscure setting but I needed to also enable Security --> Forged Transmits in the vSwitch.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.security.doc/GUID-7DC6486F-5400-44DF-8A62-6273798A2F80.html

Yup, both those things are true.

The jumper is there in case you end up with a damaged uboot image on the eMMC, you can force it to ignore that and load from SD to recover. If the eMMC is complete blank it should try to load from SD anyway without the jumper.

Steve