I need to perform an upgrade of two pfSense boxes running in a HA environment.

Before upgrading actual boxes (V 2.1), I planned to setup and prepare a new hardware : this hardware will be used during the upgrade process for the two firewalls in HA.

At that time, HA is running with a set of two identical hardware : same number of I/F, same CPU, same amount of RAM, etc..

First of all, I ran a backup of the HA cluster (backup of the MASTER unit).

I used this backup to restore pfSense toward the third unit : this unit is not the same as the set of two identical boxes (but the same number of network I/F). pfSense version to be restored is the same as the one installed and running : V2.1

While restoring/importing the backup, pfSense ask to me affect/address the right interfaces for LAN, WAN and OPT I/F.

But, after this step, nothing seems to work normally : pfSense is not rebooting, and this third hardware refuses to boot (pfSense first screen boot up appears bit nothing happens).

The actual HA cluster has some optional packages installed : cron, mailreport, ntop, OpenVPN export utility, pfblocker.

Could it be possible that the restore process failed in those package are not installed at the third hardware ?

Do I need to installed them before restore ?

If we install the last pfSense version, is it possible to restore a backup from a 2.1 version ?

Thanks a lot for held and ideas ;-)

Bye