Backup XML Question
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My understanding is that a Diagnostic - > Backup is simply an XML of the various configurations one has made to the firewall/packages and does nothing to backup the current package binaries one has installed. Is this correct?
I am interested to know how one backs up packages when we have a version change ie 23.01. If the packages change along with the major upgrade, is there a way to restore to a functional system if one experiences a problem, ie corruption in the backup. Would I need to tar my install and scp it to another say a nas or another medium?
As I see it now, once there is a new version of pfSense, the old packages are no longer available.
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You don't need a backup of those files. If you are on Plus with ZFS then that is all handled via ZFS Boot Environments, you can boot back into 22.05 if need be.
If you aren't using ZFS, then you'd just reinstall 22.05, make sure the update branch is set to stay on 22.05, then restore the config and it should keep pulling 22.05 packages in.