Unable to upgrade or install packages

zzatihz1

First time post here. Apologies in advance if this topic has been covered. I have searched but cannot find anything.

I just recently finished installing pfSense CE 2.4.5 and finally have everything stable and working. I was going to install some package upgrades as well as a new one but the package updater appears broken now that my system has recognized the update to 2.5.0 is available. Looking at the system log, it appears that the repo was updated to 2.5.0. I think this is preventing me from installing package updates or new ones. The package updater responds with "Please wait while the update system initializes" whether I request a package update or want to install a new one.

The system log states the following: "Feb 17 10:54:57 pkg-static 66051 pfSense-repo upgraded: 2.4.5_8 -> 2.5.0". I believe this is the reason packages are not installing but I cannot find where I can set this back to 2.4.5_8.

Any help or pointers are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Traveller

@zzatihz1 I'm in the same boat.

Poor form updating the repositories separate from the base version if it breaks everything.

chrullrich

@zzatihz1 Either on the command line, or the command prompt page on the web interface, run pkg info. If, and only if, you get a line about libarchive.so.7 back instead of a list of packages, do the following:

Set the update branch back to "Previous stable version (2.4.5 DEPRECATED)". This option is in System/Update, on the second tab, "Update settings".
Log on via SSH or whatever, and on the shell run: pkg-static install -f pkg.
It will probably tell you that it needs to update some repository or other, and then downgrade pkg from 1.16.1 to 1.15.6.

After this, both pkg on the command line and the online package manager should work again.

The problem is that the automatic repo update also made available a new version of the pkg package, which pfSense apparently installs automatically, and that version requires a library (libarchive.so.7) that is not on pfSense 2.4.5.

Very bad planning.

zzatihz1

@chrullrich THANK YOU! That did the trick. Indeed the response from "pkg info" was as you stated. Once I set the update branch back to "2.4.5 DEPRECATED", the package manager once again worked as expected.

Will this need to be undone once I decide to upgrade to pfSense 2.5.0?

And agreed, the upgrade planning was bad. :/