Package uninstallation after config restore? Why?
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Hello.
I had to restore configuration on my master router few days ago (to get rid of wan interface). It rebooted and when I logged in I was redirected to screen which told me that all packages are being reinstalled. I tried to access firewall and dhcp configuration from menu and still was redirected to "package reinstallation" screen. All packages where uninstalled and weren't reinstalled. When process has finished everything started working nomrally again minus packages of course. Is this normal that config restoration erases all packages? IMO it shouldn't.
BTW 1: now I can't reinstall packages. I'm getting "Unable to communicate with www.pfsense.com. Please verify DNS and interface configuration, and that pfSense has functional Internet connectivity" error. Of course both internet and dns work just fine and I can manually access www.pfsense.com from my router's shell. Problem at my side or indeed package repository is down?
BTW 2: its a pity that wan/lan interfaces are special. They shouldn't. For example I've terminated my contract with ISP whose line was defined as default wan. I have second wan and wanted to make it default without recreating dozens firewall rules. Had to hand edit exported XML to change this interface from optX to wan, remove all remains after old wan and reassign firewall rules to new interface. IMO it should be possible to change wan/lan interfaces from within web management without loosing firewall rules and without need to edit them by hand to fix interface related ones.
I'm using rather old version:
2.1-DEVELOPMENT (amd64)
built on Tue May 1 20:30:02 EDT 2012
FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASEHad DHCP problems with new ones. Reported here some time ago, but no answer.
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First, it is normal for a restore or an upgrade to delete and try to re-install any packages you might have had. Lets say you had a disaster, a fresh install would not have the packages. For upgrades, a package may need to be upgraded if someone were to come from 2.0 to 2.1. The package versions are different.
It is annoying, but there are reasons why it does that.I am not sure why you are able to get to www.pfsense.com. Perhaps you can traceroute and see were the communication breakdown is.
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Well, yes, it is annoying. Especially if it just uninstalls packages leaving non-working network services like squid, havp, openbgpd :) How about an option to tick when restoring - "do not delete my packages even if it will break something"? Actually if I'm restoring something I hope to see it in same state when copy/backup was made, not in "like fresh install" state or whole backup/restore thing becomes useless (at least for me). Anyway, next time I'll probably just overwrite config.xml instead of using restore procedure from the web. Will be faster and safer.
I can get to pfsense.com/pfsense.org just fine. Both, from internal network and router itself. It is package manager in pfsense web panel who can't get to pfsense.com/pfsense.org and I don't know why and how to fix it. It was working just fine week or so ago and I haven't changed anything since then.
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Have you checked your logs to see if there is anything there?
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I've nailed the problem. While my network or shell access prefers IPv4, package manager from web interface prefers IPv6 by which pfsense.org is indeed unavailable from my location.
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Please post how you came to find the problem and what steps you have taken to fix. I have IPv6, but there are some others here that are having the problem.
Did you disable IPv6 in the advanced options?
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I've temporarily removed IPv6 configuration from my WAN. That was enough for web to use IPv4 for package installation.