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    So... with Plus home/lab gone, and updates are *dead*

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • T
      teward
      last edited by teward

      So, I'm well aware of https://www.netgate.com/blog/addressing-changes-to-pfsense-plus-homelab being announced, and this statement made:

      As we continue the transition away from the free version of Home+Lab, the ability to get timely updates with bug fixes and improved features may be limited and would require a TAC subscription.

      Emphasis is mine.

      Well, it looks like pfSense has decided to nuke all home/lab auth keys without notification of that coming, which is a problem since I have my entire home running on pfSense Plus from the free tier. This also affects the lab environment in use by my employer where we were testing out / trialing pfSense Plus.

      This seems like something pfSense should have announced - the actual termination of updates.

      Unfortunately for pfSense, for those of us who are self employed or have limited paycheck cycles we're kind of screwed here for updates as a result. Has pfSense been made aware of this and the problems it introduces by NOT announcing this "immediate death" and choosing to be cryptic and vague about it being fully discontinued? If so, you have a customer who wants a word with your marketing team and your lawyers for "failure to properly advertise discontinuance of service and timelines therein"

      Thomas

      AmodinA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AmodinA
        Amodin @teward
        last edited by

        Glad I'm not the only one noticing the PR marketing word salad.

        Everything they've said about CE is saying it's all but discontinued completely. They just don't want to come out and say it yet.

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        • T
          teward @Amodin
          last edited by teward

          @Amodin you mean pfSense + Home/LAB. It's clear it's being discontinued, but a lack of a timeline for this causes certain... problems... for pfSense.

          From what I can tell, CE is still available.

          AmodinA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • AmodinA
            Amodin @teward
            last edited by Amodin

            @teward said in So... with Plus home/lab gone, and updates are *dead*:

            @Amodin you mean pfSense + Home/LAB. It's clear it's being discontinued, but a lack of a timeline for this causes certain... problems... for pfSense.

            From what I can tell, CE is still available.

            No I mean CE, and my statement is correct which is where they are pushing people to - CE.

            I wasn't saying Home/Lab was being discontinued. The licensing for free home use is dead. CE will be lucky to get updates (from their own blog posting from earlier) and it doesn't have similar propreties that Home/Lab has.

            It was stated that CE is a test use case to be used to evaluate the step to Plus essentially. Again, word salad.

            It's right there in the blog you posted:

            pfSense CE is a fantastic solution for your home lab or proof of concept (POC) project to see if pfSense Plus might be the right solution for your network security needs.

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            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              Existing H+L or TAC-Lite subscriptions are still valid and able to receive updates. Nothing had been disabled part way through a subscription.

              Expect further updates on the 'situation' shortly...

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              • T
                teward @stephenw10
                last edited by

                @stephenw10 I beg to differ. I'm getting error codes indicating my home entitlement is not valid anymore with no way to redownload activation keys, etc. Update servers return 400 Bad Request when on a Home subscription.

                Same with Lab @ workplace.

                So unfortunately, because I don't have a subscription other than Home or Tac Lite, I'm apparently unable to update. Unless you have a guide publicly for fixing the update servers barfing at 400 Bad Request, the statements made here don't match observed behavior.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  Send me your NDI in chat and I'll check it. As far as know though nothing existing was disabled.

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                  • T
                    teward @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10 Sent. From what I can tell the 400 Bad Request indicates that the SSL cert on my end being handed off to your end or such is being seen as invalid or such, however that's from googling the error; if the license is still 'active' on my Home/Lab/TacLITE subscription (I forget which it is oops?) then we have a bit of a problem that'll need more than any of the current documentation has provided.

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                    • T
                      teward @teward
                      last edited by

                      After prodding this and stephenw10 not finding the NDI, I went back and reactivated the subscription keys I had obtained today and it worked.

                      I had attempted to do this yesterday but it hard-failed so something between yesterday and today 'unbroke' or something really odd was going on at the NG side of things. At least I'm getting package update lists again.

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