After some poking around, going back to boot partition ada0s2a, rebooting, problem is the same.

I had made a copy of / on some spare space on the SSD. I changed /usr/local/share/pfSense/pkg/repo/pfSense-repo.conf to point to url: "pkg+https://pkg.pfsense.org/pfSense_v2_3_5_xxx and I did a pkg-static bootstrap -f and it seems the problems are solved:

How can I make sure nothing else is messed up in my installation?

Thanks in advance,

Olivier

@stephenw10

Many thanks for the answer.

Seems like "sudo pkg update -f" fixed the problem

Looks like there were some disabled gateways that I am guessing were being applied. I deleted them and the internet came back.

Probably similar to this issue:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/135903/2-4-4-gateway-issue

Re-installing to 2.4.4 clean is quick and you can just import the config from 2.4.5, the config version has not been incremented.

You can even do it during the install:
https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/backup/automatically-restore-during-install.html

Steve

Just to close the loop here - following @jimp's instructions, I was able to install with Recover Config as advised. However, if I had it to do over again, I would have tried to install with 2.4.3_1 w/Recover and then upgrade vs. 2.4.4 w/Recover because the resulting install was very slow and became non-responsive whenever it brought up the WAN interface and while the install removed some packages, there were vestiges of the old settings in places like the Services menu and on the Service Status widget on the dashboard. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that the 2.4.3_1 disk images are available anywhere.

To resolve the slow WAN issue, I inspected the config diffs that the install/upgrade recorded and notice "an unknown interface change" - it turned out that advanced DHCP settings were enabled for the WAN interface with none entered so I disabled it and that seemed to solve the WAN access and performance issue.

To eliminate the package vestiges, I installed the various packages and then removed them to purge them fully. I probably could have downloaded the config and removed any semblance of the packages instead but wanted to rely on more supported methods.

The system seems to be working properly now and I really appreciate @jimp's prompt insight, help and guidance. Rock on!

Cheers

Lanner FW-7525A
Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C2358 @ 1.74GHz
2 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s)
AES-NI CPU Crypto: Yes (active)
Hardware crypto AES-CBC,AES-XTS,AES-GCM,AES-ICM

Thank you ☺ I have followed these instructions and ultimately upgraded the system from console and rebooted.

It now appears to show the correct version

0_1538209351101_2.4.4.png

I'm an idiot 🤢 Decided to add parameters (i915kms_load="YES", ...) to /boot/loader.conf.local in advance, instead of checking the functionality without them. After deleting /boot/loader.conf.local, everything was OK. Excuse for troubling.

Unless you're running more things than would fit in 16GB (which is pretty tough to do on pfSense!) then you'll most likely be fine.

Yes that should be safe.

yes, it was because of AutoConfigBackup, I disabled it and GUI is damn fast now. Thank you.

I can't upgrade to 2.4.4 due to issues with pppoe and vlans. There should be a mechanism to only allow to install compatible versions, or at least a method to install previous releases. I'm all the way to latest and greatest, but there are times that this is not always feasible.
So is there some archive with previous package versions somewhere please?

System failed to boot successfully after reboot, couldn't access WebGUI or SSH

Well with the Update to 2.4.4 I can not reproduce this memory leak not sure what was the root cause
but pretty sure it was Dns Unbound and Dns forwarder, Not playing nice with each other.
I have try removing the packages and just setting both to run.
I have no more use for forwarder so it is now disabled. Pretty much was using
Dns Forwarder to Query Dns servers sequentially. Not sure if I was ruing just a really odd
config or using some thing for that it was not its intended use. If this pop's up again I will install
my config on a 2nd system to do a test bench to find the problem.

0_1538133967207_PF15.png

That upload failed, apparently. There is no attachment there. Can you try and post the errors again, along with whatever other details you can offer about the context/setup. What you were doing, when they appeared, where they appeared, packages you have installed, etc.

https://forum.netgate.com/category/3/captive-portal

I had no issue on upgrading very smooth some of old problems on dashboard has been solve from 2.4.3p.

@jimp

Thx
Seem there was an extra file, and removing it worked

[2.4.3-RELEASE][admin@pfSense]/root: cat /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/dnsthingy.conf
dnsthingy:{url: "https://downloads.dnsthingy.com/pkg/test/${ABI}",enabled: yes}

@chrismacmahon
Yeah, we have an SG-3100 inbound so I'll guess I will do a local backup now and then restore that onto the new unit when we get it.