2.1-release [Update - Success]

ilium007

One last thing - To me, it seems people with Alix have so far been far more willing to spend 3 hours or more in forums than to do a clean wipe and reinstall of all services, so I STILL have no idea if avahi will work after a fresh re-install. Don't think anyone has done it. (But I do fresh install at the first sign of a snag - I don't like beating my head against walls)

Probably because doing a 'fresh' install is not as easy as throwing in a CD and booting on an Alix as it is on a PC based system… I dunno.. I would rather fix a problem than do a fresh install and never know what went wrong or how to fix it.

kejianshi

Its faster, thats for sure - But you gotta live with this thing for a long time.

ilium007

@kejianshi:

Its faster, thats for sure - But you gotta live with this thing for a long time.

Maybe…

find screwdriver and open case
find CF card reader and dd image

you get the idea. Not as easy / quick as putting in a CD and hitting reset.

kejianshi

Yep - Thats what i was thinking… Exactly. Its hard?

ilium007

@kejianshi:

Yep - Thats what i was thinking… Exactly. Its hard?

I might try and find a nice Aton based board and build a new system.

kejianshi

Atom works, but I think your system is salvageable. I wouldn't set the box on fire or any thing just yet.

ilium007

@kejianshi:

Atom works, but I think your system is salvageable. I wouldn't set the box on fire or any thing just yet.

:D :D

Removing avahi now:


[2.1-RELEASE][admin@pfSense.harland]/root(7): pbi_delete -v avahi-0.6.29-i386
Running pre-removal script: /var/db/pbi/installed/avahi-0.6.29-i386/pre-remove.sh
Removing: /usr/pbi/avahi-i386

phil.davis

Type pkg_info/pbi_info into shell… pkg_delete/pbi_delete to remove.

After using pbi_info and pbi_delete you can also look in:
a) /usr/local/pkg
b) /usr/local/etc/rc.d
and get rid of the scripts starting with the package name, or obviously related to the package.
If you are reinstalling straight away, those things will get overwritten anyway by the install, so you don't really have to clean them out.
There will still be the menu options that the package added into the config. Those are in config.xml and will appear in your webGUI menus, but clicking them will give an error. Again, if you are reinstalling the package those will all become valid.
The cleanest way to "clean up" a package is

uninstall (or clean it out as above if the uninstall won't go),
install properly from the GUI,
uninstall (which should now uninstall cleanly).
I haven't had to start from a fresh CF card for a long time now - it should be quite possible to recover gracefully from package installs that die part way through.

ilium007

@phil.davis:

Type pkg_info/pbi_info into shell… pkg_delete/pbi_delete to remove.

After using pbi_info and pbi_delete you can also look in:
a) /usr/local/pkg
b) /usr/local/etc/rc.d
and get rid of the scripts starting with the package name, or obviously related to the package.
If you are reinstalling straight away, those things will get overwritten anyway by the install, so you don't really have to clean them out.
There will still be the menu options that the package added into the config. Those are in config.xml and will appear in your webGUI menus, but clicking them will give an error. Again, if you are reinstalling the package those will all become valid.
The cleanest way to "clean up" a package is

uninstall (or clean it out as above if the uninstall won't go),

install properly from the GUI,

uninstall (which should now uninstall cleanly).
I haven't had to start from a fresh CF card for a long time now - it should be quite possible to recover gracefully from package installs that die part way through.

Excellent news ! I know the Alix is underpowered but it is small, uses no power and is a nice little red steel case :D

phil.davis

I know the Alix is underpowered but it is small, uses no power and is a nice little red steel case

Yours will run faster in a red case. I only have black cases :(
Once you get it up and running with links stable and "a decent bit" of free memory after installing and configuring "42 packages", it should run fine. The challenges so far for me are the boot, where lots of stuff gets going together and the poor little thing struggles, and link (hardware or gateway or VPN) down/up events that need a bit of memory headroom for check_reload_status to do all the stuff it wants.

MaxPF

Last night I updated my Alix 2d13 from 2.1RC2 to 2.1 Release without issues. All packages reintalled.

ilium007

@MaxPF:

Last night I updated my Alix 2d13 from 2.1RC2 to 2.1 Release without issues. All packages reintalled.

Did you have to re-install them or were they there after the reboot ?

doktornotor

@ilium007:

@MaxPF:

Last night I updated my Alix 2d13 from 2.1RC2 to 2.1 Release without issues. All packages reintalled.

Did you have to re-install them or were they there after the reboot ?

5 updated Alixes here, no manual reinstall required. Incl. this abused testbed overloaded with packages.

ilium007

My issues seem to be fixed now. Removed Avahi and re-installed other packages (LED pkg for Alix board and OpenVPN client exporter).

Thanks for your help guys :D

doktornotor

@ilium007:

My issues seem to be fixed now. Removed Avahi and re-installed other packages (LED pkg for Alix board and OpenVPN client exporter).

Well, all good then. Still leaves the question why stuff like avahi, snort or squid are even offered on nanobsd.

ilium007

Not sure - but now I need a new way to get my mDNS packets across VLANs. I have a separate 'internal' wifi network to secure traffic from the internal ethernet. I also have a 'guest' wifi network that is even more restricted but without Avahi / mDNS I can't get traffic across the VLANs to allow things such as Apple Remote (control music / Apple TV etc).

First world problems I know :D

GruensFroeschli

An alternate way to get around the mDNS problem is to configure the IGMP proxy.

I'm not really sure what avahi actually does (i know it's an mDNS implementation, but that's about it).
What i do know is to allow mDNS devices to communicate over a router, you need to route 224.0.0.251 (which the igmp proxy should be able to do).

ilium007

@GruensFroeschli:

An alternate way to get around the mDNS problem is to configure the IGMP proxy.

I'm not really sure what avahi actually does (i know it's an mDNS implementation, but that's about it).
What i do know is to allow mDNS devices to communicate over a router, you need to route 224.0.0.251 (which the igmp proxy does).

OK - cool. I'll look into this some more !

dwood

success..mostly from 2.0.3 to 2.1 Release. Thanks :-)

It seems IPSEC though has some issues. Clients using Shrewsoft VPN can't connect any longer. Any pointers here?

eweri

99% Success on two Alix-Boards

Only problem: I had some OpenVPN-Server setup with tunnle-network "x.x.x.1/24" that worked since 2.0 but 2.1 needs it as "10.x.x.0/24" otherwise you find a message like this "Options error: –server directive network/netmask combination is invalid" at the log.

But now I have to get to the other side of the tunnel and change it there, too :-(

Bye,
eweri

P.S. pfsense is really great! ;-)

P.P.S. Just found out, that my OpenVPN-Server got a new WAN-IP because of the reboot after upgrade but forgot to update DynDNS - updated DynDNS by hand, now every VPN tunnle is up and running