Are you able to post screenshots of the issue you were having?

The easiest thing there is just to reboot the install though.

2.4 now uses the FreeBSD installer so things are different there. You may want to try that to see if whatever issue you hit is still present.

Steve

ive logged a bug on this issue:  https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/7730

The only section of the config that should ever be restored individually in the versions are different is system. That's the only section that contains the version information required to run to appropriate update scripts.

Can we see the console log showing the exact point it stops booting?

The most common reason for that is some console setting in the restored config changing the output such as serial speed or serial/video console.

Steve

I'm running pfsense 2.3.4 on ESXi 6.5. I'm using VM version 13, Open-VM-Tools package 10.1.0,1 and VMXNET 3 NICs. All that is working well for me.

The Netgate Device Id isn't present anywhere in the sticker or packaging. I've PMd you with S/N and MAC if that helps. Thank you.

Frankly, the minimum hardware requirements for 2.3.x have outgrown that box, and it isn't capable of running 2.4 at all.

If you start from a freshly imaged CF and restore your configuration it may run, but you'll need to watch what features you have enabled carefully, and probably not have any packages.

From your description it sounds like you have current support on that in which case use:
https://portal.pfsense.org/firmware/memstick/pfSense-netgate-memstick-ADI-2.3.4-RELEASE-p1-amd64.img.gz

Steve

I have used  TP-Link  TG-3468  cards in three  Pfs  setups and they were always recognised.    In all cases the motherboards were / are  Gigabyte.    So, I can confirm that the card should be recognised,  perhaps it's damaged or there is a motherboard fault.

J

Updated client side. Nothing works anymore.
…
Strange thing is, VPN is up and running. Everything seems normal.

Is it working or not?

ERROR: FreeBSD route add command failed: external program exited with error status: 1

That generally means there is an existing route in the system that conflicts with a route that OpenVPN is trying to add so OpenVPN cannot add it. It is generally a soft failure unless it happens to be a conflict with the actual tunnel network which can prevent OpenVPN from starting.

That very likely has more to do with the reboot after the update putting the route there than the upgrade to 2.3.4_1.

Stop the OpenVPN client process and look at the routing table. Start the OpenVPN client and examine the logs. If you set the logging verbosity to 4 it will show you which route it is trying to add. These are the entries with an intentional conflict created (Static route in the system for 10.100.100.0/24 and also listing it as a remote network in an OpenVPN client):

Jul 23 19:09:36 openvpn 71076 /sbin/route add -net 172.25.232.0 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0
Jul 23 19:09:36 openvpn 71076 /sbin/route add -net 10.100.100.0 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0
Jul 23 19:09:36 openvpn 71076 ERROR: FreeBSD route add command failed: external program exited with error status: 1

I've had simliar issues with previous updates.  Now I always update the system using ssh with option 13 and it never fails there.

Sure enough, it's working now. Thanks!

@Gertjan:

https://www.netgate.com/docs/sg-2220/connect-to-console.html

You''re using a PC ? A COM port is present and you use it when starting Putty ?

edit : Putty as a COM (serial or RS232) client won't help you much to clarify the situation. As per instructions,, Putty connects to a COM port (created by the driver that comes along with the Serial-to-USB cable - check that this COM port was created when the drivers was installed AND the cable is connected ) and will 'open' this port ans show on screen everything that's comes in.
Bit rater, stop bits and other parity stuff becomes important, using the wrong settings on both sides of the COM port will produce rubbish at best, nothing at worst.

From what I understand reading the doc "SG-2220", the BIOS will init his COM port with known settings : the settings on the PC COM port should match exactly.
That's about it.

Thanks Gertjan.  I found that while I couldn't access the console, I can see system logs as the PfSense is booting up.

There appears to have been a different issue as well though - so I'm not sure how the whole solution got messed up this badly since I configured it initially.  Since I can access the boot menu, I tried to boot into single user mode to reset the password like that.  However, the mount command gave an error indicating that I need to run fsck.  I tried it using journaling first, which completed successfully but resulted in a kernel panic after I ran /etc/rc.initial.password.  That was yesterday.  This morning I gave it another shot without journaling, which worked.  I'm finally able to access the web interface again, but still no console if I connect after it booted.  It's weird.  It sounds like the plug has been pulled on it a couple of times though, resulting in a hard shutdown.

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated!

There is no new logo in UI, only on login page, overall UI is the same as 2.3
You should ask your questions about 2.4 in appropriate forum https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?board=69.0

2GB disk, partitioned by the original install - 1GB UFS and 1GB swap.

I've got it going now by creating a new VM and restoring from a backup - only thing missing was the OpenVPN client export, but that was easy to fix  :)

My upgrade from 2.3.4 went fine too. I'm running pfsense on VMWare 6.5.

@Blade1:

…  I give a private IP for the LAN interface, e.g. 11.0.0.1, which can be pinged from pfsense. However,

11.0.0.1 is private ??

Sorry, newbie mistake. My status dashboard indicates install of the amd64 version and shows 4 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 4 core(s).

Hey biggsy

I checked and no errors at the moment. But I did revert back to using the realtek as the WAN and the HP as LAN due to performance issues. So right now I'm only using one of the two dual ports and things are working well again.  So I'm not using the HP nic for WAN and LAN.

When I get a chance I'll try re-configuring the interfaces to use only the HP dual nic for LAN and WAN and then checking STATUS > INTERFACES again.

Thanks