heston76, If the system is running a database server or also anything that loads modules from files (emacs comes to mind) are good to stop before upgrading the files on disk. Booting to single user mode guarentees that nothing else beyond the minimum is running. So that's a good safe procedure. But on say a git-daemon server serving files on disk there is little problem with upgrading while the system it

running but the running system is little more than single user mode anyway.

On machines running database servers I always do a full database dump and shut down the database before upgrading. It's my paranoia! Can always load the backup if needed. (If you need more availability then using replicated databases keeps one online always as the other is upgraded.)

rwp: speaking of upgrading with pkgbase, what is the proper sequence for adding a Poudriere jail for the new release? With freebsd-update I could provision it after the second restart, i.e. after userland was updated.