For whatever reason I was unable to sleep since very early this morning. While updating one for the WordPress based sites that I am responsible for I noticed that 2.8.5 was released. As a precaution I did ssh into the server and back up the database as well as the entire contents of the web root for each site in question.
Much to my surprise however, the automatic update option was successful. I must say that the WordPress team has been making great strides in maintainability of the system over the last few releases. First with the successful integration of single button widget installation and updating. Now they have added this much needed feature to update the entire core system.
In fifteen minutes I was able to update all of my sites without much fuss. Hat’s off to the WP devteam.