Chinese Water Torture: no notifications for available package updates…

rcfa

While it's a smallish issue, the fact that it continues without end in sight makes it one of the things that I find the most grating in using pfSense:

Not being a full time admin, pfSense should be mostly set&forget, not an ongoing side job.
Unfortunately, while I'm notified of minor and major issues by e-mail, there's no way of either getting notified that new package updates are available, or to set package updates to be auto-installed.

So at random intervals I have to manually check both of my pfSense units if per chance there are package updates available.

First, it's a distraction to have to think of doing this
Second, half the time, it's wasted effort, because there are no updates
Third, the other half of the time you log in, and there's half a dozen or so updates, and one spends half an hour or more updating the various packages on both systems.

If I'd get e-mail notifications when a package update is available, it would be a thing of my mind to think about, and it usually would be a quick procedure to update one or two packages, exactly when needed, and wouldn't gobble up time for nothing. Given that we have an e-mail notification process in place and given that Dashboard knows when package updates are available, how hard can it be to integrate the system's awareness of package updates with the e-mail notification system?

If I could set packages to auto-update, that would be even more painless, although that would be a bit more difficult, because the packages would need to be able to specify if an update is a "no brainer" or if it would require potential manual intervention if there's a potential for incompatibilities, or a requirement for manual configuration changes; which in turn would also require some sort of notification mechanism.

So basically, unless pfSense needlessly sticks to this way too pedestrian approach to package updates, the unavoidable thing is to integrate this at the very least with e-mail notifications.

PRETTY PLEASE!

KOM

If I could set packages to auto-update, that would be even more painless

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I agree with you 100% about email notifications. Auto-update of pfSense packages would be a terrible idea because the quality of the packages and update mechanism isn't as stable & reliable as it should be. Maybe the option should be there, but disabled by default.

johnpoz

I like the idea of email notifications as well, have email notifications in pfsense setup.. email that new package version available would be fantastic!

cmb

@KOM:

I agree with you 100% about email notifications. Auto-update of pfSense packages would be a terrible idea because the quality of the packages and update mechanism isn't as stable & reliable as it should be. Maybe the option should be there, but disabled by default.

The bulk of the package issues go away in 2.3 with the removal of PBI, but still, agree any automatic update mechanism shouldn't be enabled by default.

It would be nice to have a cron job to check package versions and email update notifications.

KOM

The bulk of the package issues go away in 2.3 with the removal of PBI

Not nearly fast enough.

khorton

It seems that there is little hope to ever get an official way to get notification of available package updates.

Does anyone have some unofficial solution to this problem? Is there some way to have a cron job that checks for package updates and sends an email if there are any available?

fireodo

@khorton said in Chinese Water Torture: no notifications for available package updates…:

Does anyone have some unofficial solution to this problem? Is there some way to have a cron job that checks for package updates and sends an email if there are any available?

As far as I remember @luckman212 made such a script!
Here is the thread:
Update Check

khorton

@fireodo said in Chinese Water Torture: no notifications for available package updates…:

@khorton said in Chinese Water Torture: no notifications for available package updates…:

Does anyone have some unofficial solution to this problem? Is there some way to have a cron job that checks for package updates and sends an email if there are any available?

As far as I remember @luckman212 made such a script!
Here is the thread:
Update Check

Thanks! This script escaped detection during my searches.