Fresh install 12.2 Stable on ZFS, the install has been done with all defaults. The first command after root login "freebsd-update fetch" fails with "cannot update from a version that is not a release". System: Virtualbox 6.1.18 running on Host-OS Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. The vdi file is 20GB. The virtualbox set up worked fine with 12.1. ISO file: FreeBSD-12.2-STABLE-amd64-20210225-r369362-disc1 Hardware: Ryzen 3 2200G; 2 ZFS striped partitions in Ubuntu for the vdi file, also used with 30 other VMs (Linux and Windows). I will keep the installation for some time, in case you need more info. Partition info and ZFS (zpool and zfs) all as expected.
It's not a bug but a feature. The STABLE has to be updated from sources, freebsd-update(8) is a tool to handle RELEASE and sometimes BETA or RC versions. You can trick freebsd-update(8) with "--currently-running" option to skip this check, but the resulted upgrade can become inconsistent and full of mismerges done by etcupdate(8). Please consider closing this PR.
OK but that name STABLE for something that is still in development is extremely confusing for a normal person. I will try to find RELEASE and use that.
(In reply to Bert Nijhof from comment #2) fwiw this is discussed more in the FAQ in "1.9. What is the FreeBSD-STABLE concept?": https://docs.freebsd.org/faq/introduction.html#idp44956152