Getting a 4100

stephenw10

I mean it's never a bad idea to install clean.
But if you reinstalled when 22.01 came out to get onto ZFS you should not have to reinstall again.

Going forward I would expect it to be possible to roll back an upgrade, from 22.09 to 22.05 say.

Steve

SteveITS

@stephenw10 said in Getting a 4100:

I would expect it to be possible to roll back an upgrade, from 22.09 to 22.05 say

The blog post on 22.05 beta has a really cool video showing that. That exact thing would have recently saved me a recovery/reinstall trip to a client. [edit: it's a 30 min video but a great feature...can set the prior env. to active so if an upgrade fails, someone just unplugs for you and it boots up the old version. Or boot, choose last/good from console, and delete the bad version.]

There is a ZFS install doc page though it doesn't show when searching for "ZFS" in the doc site. Basically, take the defaults. I just did this on our office router, reinstalled, had it pull the existing config. I think it took longer to get and burn the USB stick.

bingo600

@stephenw10
What about us "unfaithfull" with non Netgate HW.
The current install path is CE-2.6.0 --> pfSense+

This means the ZFS layout will be made by CE-2.6.0, no matter what pfSense+ we end up with ....

Any chance that 22.05 will be released as a "full install package" for 3'd party HW (that has already registered their NGID) ?

/Bingo

SteveITS

@bingo600 2.6 installs ZFS by default on new installs too.

bingo600

@steveits said in Getting a 4100:

@bingo600 2.6 installs ZFS by default on new installs too.

Yep , but there was a mention of a possible ZFS layout change.

As there was a ZFS layout change from 2.5.2 to 2.6.0 , where a reinstall was not required , but recommended.

/Bingo

Bob.Dig

@bingo600 I think the talk here is all about downgrading, not upgrading?

bingo600

Well i just upgraded a Non Netgate test box from 22.01 to 22.05-Beta.
It was build with CE-2.6.0 --> Get Plus Key --> 22.01 --> 22.05-Beta.

Took quite some time to download the packages , but else no issues

I have the new Boot environment.

My ZFS disk layout

/root: df -h
Filesystem                         Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
pfSense/ROOT/default               127G    1.0G    126G     1%    /
devfs                              1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
pfSense/var                        126G    3.4M    126G     0%    /var
pfSense/tmp                        126G    356K    126G     0%    /tmp
pfSense/var/empty                  126G     96K    126G     0%    /var/empty
pfSense/var/db                     126G    8.6M    126G     0%    /var/db
pfSense                            126G     96K    126G     0%    /pfSense
pfSense/var/tmp                    126G    112K    126G     0%    /var/tmp
pfSense/home                       126G    224K    126G     0%    /home
pfSense/var/log                    126G    332K    126G     0%    /var/log
pfSense/var/cache                  126G    260M    126G     0%    /var/cache
pfSense/reservation                140G     96K    140G     0%    /pfSense/reservation
pfSense/ROOT/default/cf            126G    5.1M    126G     0%    /cf
pfSense/ROOT/default/var_db_pkg    126G    3.8M    126G     0%    /var/db/pkg
tmpfs                              4.0M    220K    3.8M     5%    /var/run
devfs                              1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /var/dhcpd/dev

I have just booted , not done any real tests yet...

@Gertjan
Sorry to go OT here ....

/Bingo

SteveITS

@bingo600 I don’t think the partition layout changed again? The release notes do say “ZFS Boot Environment (BE) snapshots support (Plus only)” so sorry for misunderstanding that.

Gertjan

The SG-4100 / 128Gb came in yesterday.

I'll play with it for some more days. Want to know all about this ZFS thing. How it boots (is there a BIOS ?).
The I'll request a firmware and keep on a spare USB drive.

Still somewhat afraid : no VGA support, just "serial 115200 COM" port, which works fine.

Then I'll tackle the big step :
Convert an existing config.xml file into the new "4100" config.xml so I can swap in one go.
NIC drivers names are different of course - and what more ? (not much I guess).
I'll write about that when I'm done.

For now : the 4100 is just awesome.

Btw : the 4100 uses pfSense Plus ..... I'll hope it's the same as the current 2.6.0.
I saw there was some extra VPN stuff.

SteveITS

@gertjan Everything has a BIOS at some level. :) Nothing to "enter and configure" though.

ZFS is a file system. The dashboard Disks widget will show you if it's already using ZFS.

If the config is not massively complicated you can restore the backup and assign interfaces during the restore, then it boots and installs the packages. If it is rather complicated (normally: converting to/from a device with a switch) Netgate will convert it for you.
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/restore-different-version.html

CE and Plus are still fairly close. There was a thread a few months back but it's like 95% similar. The upcoming ZFS Boot Environment is a really neat Plus feature though...see the video in the Netgate blog I linked above. (if that's what you meant by "BIOS"...no, to oversimplify it, it's basically choosing which version of your disk to boot from).

dennypage

@stephenw10 Now a curiosity question... Are the 4100/6100 BIOS based or UEFI?

stephenw10

They run BlinkBoot, which is UEFI.