@stephenw10 I'm baffled too - unless there was some chicken-and-egg problem where it didn't know the repo to write because there was no repo to write etc. I thought I'd seen all the different ways a problem could manifest in the update system. Silly me :) Thanks, everyone!

Always appreciated!

Mmm, there's no mouse in the Net Installer (or any installer). Technically it's not a GUI it's a TUI so it's keyboard only.

I know this is months later but I just had this same problem and this guide helped me fix it: https://github.com/pfsense/docs/blob/master/source/install/upgrade-troubleshooting.rst

Hi @gargamel I have the same issue as you mentioned, i have HPE microserver gen 10 plus and it gives me the same error ! can you please share the solution i didn't get it : 1- you mean i do a fresh installation of pfsense 2.8.1 using UEFI mode then when the installation finished i boot in legacy mode ? hope you reply soon and thank you for your help

Hmm, nothing unexpected there. I assume it still fails in exactly the same way if you try to upgrade again now? There have been some changes to the 25.07.1 repo.

I removed these lines: <loader readonly='yes' type='pflash' format='raw'>/usr/share/qemu/ovmf-x64/OVMF_CODE-pure-efi-tpm.fd</loader> <nvram format='raw'>/etc/libvirt/qemu/nvram/384971b7-7248-55e4-dd68-caa71cda114f_VARS-pure-efi-tpm.fd</nvram> So it defaulted to BIOS and now it always works

Mmm, not able to replicate that. The ISO file is gzipped. You can extract it and upload it to a hypervisor to install a VM. If you're seeing the ISO contents it looks like your OS has "helpfully" mounted the file which is probably not what you want.

Yup some USB drives don't play nicely with one of the ports. It always the same though.

Hi all, Thanks for all the info provided, much appreciated. I can confirm that disabling in BIOS the WiFi card solved the issue. I was able to upgrade to 2.8.1 without an issue. Thanks!

It's still an open bug upstream: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=283285

@SteveITS @patient0 THANK YOU BOTH!!! had ZERO knowledge or idea my issue was that EZ 2 solve; SOOOOOO many wasted hours SMH Yes, it is installing ATM

Hmm, OK. Can't be that then. In that case I would connect the new client device to trigger the issue then check the system log to see what events are being triggered when you do that.

Thanks. It turns out a number of the IPs in my DNS servers were no longer responding. Problem solved :)

Hmm, well it could also have been due to BE snapshots filling the disk. In both cases though it should have failed gracefully with a warning alert.

Try booting it in Legacy BIOS mode if you can.