Upgrade from 2.0.1 to 2.4.2 - How to

Arnaud.D

Hi everyone,

I am trying to update our old (old, old…) pfsense, to be a little bit more up to date with security.

We have redundant pfsense (we do the thing right, don't we ?) with this version of pfsense :
2.0.1-RELEASE (amd64)
built on Mon Dec 12 18:16:13 EST 2011
FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE-p6

I've already read https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Firmware_Updates#Version_2.2.6_and_earlier and https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Redundant_Firewalls_Upgrade_Guide .

I have stopped pfsync between the 2 pfsense, and change parameters of XMLRPC Config Sync to make it not work anymore.
I'd like to update to the last release, 2.4.2.

With this kind of old version, I still can manually upgrade my pfsense, so I put the pfSense-CE-memstick-2.4.2-RELEASE-amd64.img.gz uder System > Firmware > Firmware image file (I haven't seen any contraindication to do so)

I still can ping the server. But when I try to "upgrade firmware", the page will delay with "inaccessible site"

More, when I try a ssh connection, I got the following :
Network error : Software caused connection abort

Have you any clues about how to do my upgrade ?

I have backed up both conf files from my master and backup pfsense, and make a SD card for both of them.

Thanks for any help,
Regards,

Arnaud

P.S : The captcha say "V1 shutdown on 2018-03-31. Direct site owners to g.co/recaptcha/upgrade . I'm quite sure someone else has already do it, but just in case, I put it here

heper

personally i'd just remove all addon packages & do a clean install & import the config-backup

Arnaud.D

Thank you for your answer.

I think we will have to do so, but I hoped that I could have do this on a easier way.

Do you think that update step by step (2.0.1> 2.1> 2.2> 2.3> 2.4.2) can help me ?

And just to add an UPDATE :

I have tried to put the last .img.gz on my firewall, under /mnt/tmp. I tried to upgrade using the option 13 : Upgrade from console > Update from a local file.
It first look like it works ! But after 2 automatic reboots, and 15 minuts of working, I'm still in release 2.0.1.

pfSense 1 - 0 Me.
Here I really don't understand why the system has acted like it works for no results.

But well, I think I will wait for at least another answer, maybe someone will have forget to update his firewall since 2011 too ^^

If one of this issue looks familiar to someone, feel free to give some hints here

heper

@Arnaud.D:

Thank you for your answer.

I think we will have to do so, but I hoped that I could have do this on a easier way.

what i've suggested is the easiest way