Cannot not "upgrade" to 2.7 from 2.6 (web interface) nor install a daily snapshot successfully

[N8LBV]

Sorry I'm not a skilled developer but am interested.
Back in January I started upgrading some of my 2.6.0 to the latest 2.7 dev at the time:
base system: 2.7.0.a.20230127.0600

This fixed a problem with openvpn connections dropping and being very difficult to restart or get them back up again. there's a thread about this.

More recently I am unable to update a 2.6.0 system from the web interface sucessfully.
It upgrades just fine and reboots but leaves a non-bootable system that is hard frozen.
The initial boot screen outputs "funny characters" on the screen along with text they are black with a heart symbol in them. and never boots the OS.
I can manually choose the old kernel and it boots.
I'm not sure if using the old kernel will break functionality or anything and I also do not know how to have it autoboot the old kernel.
The broken system that It upgrades to at the moment is: 2.7.0.a.20230420.0600
I have tried this on three different systems and it breaks the same way.
1- Hyper-v virtual system
2- Mini Qotom PC J1900 CPU
3- Mini Qotom PC i5 CPU (AES-NI)

Just as frustrating: Trying to boot the 2.7 dev install memstick only results in a solid block cursor in the upper left corner of the display
caps lock still responds and so does ctrl-alt-del.

After install reboot lock (with some stuff on the screen) see attached image(s).
gives a hardlock and no capslock response nor ctrl-alt-del response.

Daily builds and snapshots links take me to the same place that only offers one version and it from back in February 2023 while today's date is 4/22/2023
What am I doing wrong?

link text

[N8LBV]

Ok- so I'm partly an idiot.
I'm trying to boot the ADI memstick and didn't even notice in the filename.
Continuing on now.

Trying a 2.7 clean install then upgrade to see if I get the same crashed system-
That I get if I upgrade from 2.6 using the web UI

-or if it works.

[N8LBV]

OK Cool.

I can install 2.7 and upgrade it to the latest build and it works.
It consistently fails and crashes if I try to upgrade to 2.7 from 2.6 using the web update/upgrade interface.

With or without 2.6 being in a fresh just after install state. ( not having doe any changes or customizations).

I first noticed this problem a few weeks ago when I tried to update a 2.6 Hyper-V VM to 2.7
And then again on hardware yesterday.

So I have a path to make it work now which is awesome.
Meanwhile I think the upgrade/update function is broken badly.
I can reproduce it on my end.

[N8LBV]

I'm not seeing much interest here in this.
I'm also not being very patient :)
And I found a work-around.
I am going to post a new thread that is specifically about the 2.6.0 update/upgrade no longer working.

[N8LBV]

Easy to reproduce on 5 different systems.
I don't see any other posts about it.
I went ahead and filed an issue in redmine on this.
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/14305