Table of Contents
PFSense - Upgrade PFSense
IMPORTANT: Do not upgrade packages until after you have updated pfSense itself.
Take a backup
Navigate to Diagnostics → Backup & Restore.
- Click the Download configuration as XML button.
and ensure that you select Save before clicking on OK.
The file should be save to your Download directory, for example:
config-pfSense.localdomain-20200409161149.xml
Prepare a fall back plan
Plan for how to recover beforehand.
Write a USB stick to have the latest pfSense image file available on it.
If the upgrade fails for some reason, you could reinstall it from this USB stick, and then just reapply the changes you need.
As an extra step, you could also have a another USB stick written with the current pfSense image file.
This would allow you to revert the system to the existing version if really needed.
Remove packages
It is recommended to remove all packages before upgrading pfSense to a new release.
Make a note the installed packages, remove them, perform the upgrade, and then reinstall necessary packages.
NOTE: Many packages, such as pfBlockerNG have options to remember the configuration you have set, which once you reinstall the package after the upgrade will reset the configuration you had:
Pre-Upgrade Reboot
Reboot before doing any update attempt.
Perform the Update
From the GUI:
Navigate to System → Update.
- Set Branch to Latest stable version.
- Click on “Confirm”.
Update manually (optional)
From the console or ssh:
- Select option 13 OR select option 8
and run:
pfSense-upgrade
An alternative method is to use the following commands from the console or shell:
pkg-static clean -ay; pkg-static install -fy pkg pfSense-repo pfSense-upgrade
Force a reinstall of everything:
pkg-static upgrade -f
Review the list of changes and enter y to proceed.
Manually reboot the firewall.
Troubleshooting
Check the update log
A log of the last update attempt is located at /conf/upgrade_log.latest.txt.
If the update check fails, or the update does not complete, run the following to ensure that pfSense-upgrade is present.
pkg-static update pkg-static upgrade -fy pkg install -y pfSense-upgrade
Could also try, after choosing Option 8,
ifconfig
cpsw0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=8000b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,LINKSTATE>
ether 68:9e:19:9c:a6:59
hwaddr 68:9e:19:9c:a6:59
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
...
Use the first NIC shown above in the following:
dhclient cpsw0
pkg-static update
pkg-static upgrade -fy