unable to remove packages when offline

adamw

I have Netgate SG-3100 which was running pfSense+ 22.01.

I booted it with the factory default config, connected to the internet and uninstalled all additional packages.
Then, also using the web GUI, I upgraded to 23.05.1 (2 stages).
I installed all previously removed packages and rebooted, this time in offline mode.
Now, when I connected with web GUI and try to remove any package I get:

xxx removal failed!
Another instance of pfSense-upgrade is running. Try again later

I waited for 10 minutes but it made no difference.

Package removal starts working again as soon as the firewall goes online.

Is it a requirement? Weird...

bmeeks

Yes, having Internet connectivity so the pkg utility can contact the remote pfSense repo is required for installing/updating/removing packages in the GUI.

You can do some things on the command line using a shell prompt without Internet connectivity. In that situation, you would want to use pkg-static so as to use the pkg utility binary compiled with static library links.

For example, you could remove a package and you could install or update a package provided you had all the required files residing locally on the pfSense firewall filesystem. That would include all of the required dependent packages. This only works at a shell prompt. The GUI interface is going to assume Internet connectivity is present and operable, and if not it's going to complain.

What many folks fail to consider with packages is that seldom is a package a single file. Instead, the core package and then some number of shared library dependences are also installed. When Internet connectivity is present, the pkg utility automatically reaches out to the proper package repo and pulls down the needed dependent packages for installation.

SwissSteph

Thank you for this question and thank you for the answer, I learned something today

jimp

It might work after a while. That particular error is probably because you have the dashboard set to check for updates, so once you login it's kicking off a session of pfSense-upgrade to check for updates. Since you're offline, that will take a while to time out, and going back to the dashboard would start it checking again.

That said, using the CLI in that specific case is probably more reliable. GUI packages are named pfSense-pkg-<name> when operating with pkg or pkg-static directly, you'll want to install/uninstall them using that name. To see what packages like that are installed, use something like pkg-static info -x pfSense-pkg.