Update 2.7.0 Dev to Stable process?
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@N8LBV the link at the top of this page really solved all cobray and mine pfsenses with no reinstalll needed;
if you are afraid to try just instamm a new pfsense 2.7.0 devel on a virtual machine to reproduce the bug and try there - they are all pfsense buildin commands
according to chatgpt:
Assuming you are referring to package management on a FreeBSD system, the command "pkg bootstrap" is used to initialize the package management system and set up the necessary directory structure and configuration files. The "-f" flag in this context is used to force the bootstrap process, potentially overwriting existing configurations or data.maybe i am little more adventurous ...but i've tested on the closest one to me ( to be able to go there and restore a backup asap) and it worked!
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@mc-amz not afraid to try anything if I have a backup :)
But I really wanted to get this discussion on the "is this normal or not or is it a bug" table.
Another fix is of course to clean install and restore from a backup config.But I was First trying to understand why it's failing and if it could be fixed in a future release etc. or a backend DNS update etc..
So that one can simply update from the web interface.
It was working awhile back before the release and it immediately fails.
Seems to be a DNS lookup failure or old dev update server name is gone or something like that.
If there were an "official" way to get it pointed in the right place again so that one can update - this is what I was really after.
a bug report may reveal if this is a possibility or not.-Steve
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100% it is not DNS ... if you can ping randon domain names from CLI you will get them resolved
as chatgpt explained:
Assuming you are referring to package management on a FreeBSD system, the command "pkg bootstrap" is used to initialize the package management system and set up the necessary directory structure and configuration files. The "-f" flag in this context is used to force the bootstrap process, potentially overwriting existing configurations or data.i would assume that there is a mismatch in depencies / something corrupt and as soon as you force a reinitialization all goes back to normal
i would...just try it on one box ..ofc with backup before
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@mc-amz when I say "DNS" I mean something like a host name that was particular to a dev branch like 2.7dev when no longer in development no longer exists
but the update system may be still looking for it but it was removed (thus the instant failure when you go to the update page)
I'm not saying this is the problem but am saying maybe it could be or is something similar to this.
This official fix may be a config issue to get it pointing to the proper place to check for updates.
Currently ability to check for updates is broken and this has been broken since the release.
Because of the way it fails - my first suspicion is that a host name or update server (of which the system is looking for) no longer exists.-Steve
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@N8LBV:
How long did you stay on 2.7dev? By that I mean did you update to 2.7 RC when that was released, or did you skip that and stay on the DEVEL branch?Updating from DEVEL to RELEASE is not supported because there can be large differences in shared library versions and of course the kernel is likely a different revision. Update from RC (Release Candidate) to RELEASE is supported and generally works just fine.
The normal progression for someone in your shoes would be run DEVEL and closely follow that branch including moving to RC when that is available. From RC it is easy to migrate to RELEASE. But, if you stay on the DEVEL branch after RELEASE happens, then the DEVEL branch is subject to get new updates that make downgrading back to RELEASE impossible. In that scenario, a reinstall is necessary.
If you stayed on DEVEL past when it inched beyond RC, then you can't reliably upgrade to RELEASE. When that cutoff happens is a matter of exactly when the developer team pulls in updates to the DEVEL tree that push it ahead of the previous RC and RELEASE branches.
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@bmeeks Yep I waited until after release.
Life got busy and that moved really fast after not moving really fast for a long time.
It got me by surprise.I am fully expecting to have to re-install and restore from backup.
Hopefully that works just fine without issues otherwise I'm in a little bit of trouble but I did plan for that trouble :)
I'm in pretty good shape, I did not put customers in this situation other than my own semi production environment.
I'm fully aware and know what I might have to deal with.Here I am only trying to find out definitively if this path is supported or not.
And your response here is the very first response I have seen in awhile (over a week) that actually suggests that this is not.I'm perfectly fine with having to re-install and restore from my backup config from 2.7dev
And am in even better shape if it works.
I understand that is expected to work.
I'll have to travel to a few of my own sites but I was expecting that, but you know... I was wanting to at least find out if this was a suppoted or expected to work upgrade path
before having to do that. -
@N8LBV:
If you in fact stayed on the DEVEL tree a bit too long and installed a recent "update" from there that was newer than the 2.7 RC update that came out back in May, then upgrades from current DEVEL are not, and never have been, supported.What is supported is running DEVEL, following those updates, and then updating to the RC when it comes out in the DEVEL tree. From RC it is supported to upgrade to RELEASE. But once RELEASE drops and the DEVEL tree moves on (sometimes within a few days of RELEASE being posted), then "downgrading" from DEVEL to RELEASE is not supported (and never has been).
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@bmeeks Thanks!
I guess this was my time to learn this.
I did not see this in the upgrading docs.
I will look back through and see if I somehow missed this.I feel more like I do now.
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@N8LBV It would be cool if there were a way to move it to the RC then to release since that was supported at one time and I missed it.
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@N8LBV said in Update 2.7.0 Dev to Stable process?:
I did not see this in the upgrading docs.
I'm not surprised it's not mentioned there. As I mentioned, the typical pathway would be DEVEL --> RC --> RELEASE, and that pathway is supported. Upgrading from RC to RELEASE is supported because when the RC is available, development there ceases. The only exception would be if a huge showstopper problem was found. In that case RC might get an update, or might even be pulled and the branch fall back into DEVEL.
The problem is that the versions of critical pieces of the OS and supporting shared libraries change as the next DEVEL version progresses. Each DEVEL update can move the DEVEL and RELEASE branches farther apart at the kernel and shared library levels. There rapidly approaches a point where you can't go backwards.
I don't know what your level of expertise is with FreeBSD software development and software development in general, but OS and shared library versions are very critical to other software running on a platform. pfSense is FreeBSD at its heart, but it is a slightly modified FreeBSD kernel. The GUI you see is handled by PHP. Changes to only PHP source code would normally be fairly easy to "downgrade". But if something in the kernel or shared libraries changes, that is not easy to "downgrade". By "downgrade" I'm talking about moving backwards from a DEVEL version to RELEASE.
A really big change between 2.6 and 2.7 (and now 2.8 DEVEL) was the move to PHP 8.x from PHP 7.4.
