@jlw52761 said in Downgrade packages:
Unfortunately your comparison doesn't hold much weight because every software vendor I've ever dealt with, Microsoft, Apple, VMware, Cisco, Palo Alto, Ubuntu, etc all maintain support for multiple versions and don't force folks to the "bleeding edge" regardless of issues. In fact, look at what has happened to Microsoft and Apple over the last 2 years, they are having to move to the stance of allowing users to defer updates instead of forcing issues, like loss of data.
By saying the majority of folks don't have issues and only those that have problems post is discouraging those folks from posting or pointing out problems due to fear of being singled out.
Now I don't know about some folks, but 20+ years in the enterprise infrastructure has taught me one constant, bleeding edge in production is the quickest route to disaster, and the method that Netgate is taking flies in the face of stable production.
Now, with that, I have upgraded both of my firewalls to the 2.4.5 release, and guess what, frr still will not start on one and not run reliably on the other, and there's no log entries or indications of why the situation is occurring. If I had this running in my business and I lost BGP in this fashion, I would no longer have this vendor in my environment. Plain and simple.
I understand Netgate tries to test and validate as much as possible before releasing new software, but the reality is they cannot test for every possible use case and scenario, and I wouldn't expect them to be able to either, which is why I would rather have the option of testing a new release in my lab before being forced to place it in production, or have the option to hold off any new releases for several weeks. Personally, I do not want my production to be anyone's guinea pig environment, and I avoid testing in production at all costs, and the current way Netgate does the software push doesn't allow me to easily do this.
What I said about who posts and who does not is generally true. It's not meant to single anyone out. Just to point out that it is not a reliable indicator of how "bad" some particular issue may be.
No matter. My intent was not to pick a fight with you or argue. Just wanted to point out there are reasons for how some things are handled when it comes to free open-source software.
However, in this instance Netgate/pfSense has taken a rather out-of-the-ordinary step of making the prior 2.4.4_p3 release available again, including packages compiled for 2.4.4._p3. Search the recent forum posts and you will see how to roll back.
