Error updating to 26.03

[NGUSER6947]

Seeing errors:

Upgrade
pkg: "Upgrading packages in cloned boot environment default" returned error code 137 @ 2026-04-02 09:25:45

file:///home/me/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot%20from%202026-04-02%2009-26-40.png

This is on an SG-1100.

[stephenw10]

Does it show an error/alert on the dashboard after that?

Does it show 'out of space'?

The most common cause of that is old ZFS Boot Environments using disk space. Check: System > Boot Environments

[NGUSER6947]

@stephenw10 Hi Stephen.

Yes, this error:

Upgrade
pkg: "Upgrading packages in cloned boot environment default" returned error code 137 @ 2026-04-02 09:25:45

Shows at the top of the screen with the red error indicator.

I did have 3 boot environments including 25.11 and 25.11.1 (current).

I deleted the oldest of the 3 and tried the upgrade again and it failed with the same error.

[stephenw10]

Hmm, did it fail in the same place in the upgrade?

Anything in the system log at that time? Like pkg-static failing perhaps?

[pfsenseoropnsense]

Also ran into failure error "out of space" error code 3. Rebooted. Found this deleted all but the default boot environment (had 4 others kicking around) and update proceeded without issue on an 1100. Had previously flashed the unit manually to deal with EFI fwiw.

[NGUSER6947]

@stephenw10 So this morning I deleted the older boot environment (25.11), rebooted the device, attempted the upgrade again. Here's where it failed:
file:///home/me/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot%20from%202026-04-03%2007-05-36.png

This error is in the log:
file:///home/me/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot%20from%202026-04-03%2007-06-17.png

Here's my memory and disk usage:

Not sure what to try now.

[NGUSER6947]

Would upgrading via the console be an option here?

Am I at the limits of what I can expect my SG-1100 to do; should I be looking to upgrade the hardware soon?

[SteveITS]

@NGUSER6947 you can try uninstalling packages and upgrading at console, yes.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/24-03.html#low-memory-hardware-and-aws-azure-instances

[quasides]

@SteveITS @NGUSER6947

had the same issue. uninstalling packages will not do much for you, you will fail just on a different point.

the clue here is that it fails despite large enough diskspace avail.
which means we get wrong intel by the filesystem or run out of ram.

solution is to upgrade your zpool.
in console

zpool upgrade pfSense
then to make sure we do a
zpool scrub pfSense
check in a minute via
zpool status pfSense
and just for good measure
zpool trim pfSense

this should solve the issue and upgrade will proceed as expected

[SteveITS]

@quasides would be very careful with zpool upgrade
https://forum.netgate.com/post/1167450

[Mission-Ghost]

This is very similar or identical to my 1100s update failure mode for 26.03.

I removed all the zfs snapshots and all packages (including pfBlocker, which is known to consume a lot of space) and re-ran the update from the GUI with success.

Low space consumption figures on the dashboard do not seem to correlate with a successful update on the SG1100. Mine were lower than yours and it still failed without removing the packages.

[marcosm]

It looks like a memory resource issue. Uninstall all packages, reboot, and try again. The next release has improved memory handling during updates which will mitigate these issues on lol memory systems.

[SteveITS]

@marcosm

@marcosm said in Error updating to 26.03:

lol memory systems.

Typo?

[quasides]

@marcosm
reboots did nothing for me and memory wasnt low either
the only thing that helped was upgrading the zpool

[quasides]

@SteveITS
yea thats stupid, upgrading a zfs pool shouldnt break boot - ever

which means whoever ships a distribution has no make sure that boot and zfs version allign.

so while that maybe the case that on pfsense poolupgrade break boot, its not really a solution to not upgrade, as it can in turn be nessesary as it seems in this case (false reports of diskspace)

the solution is a bug report and netgate double check their components

[RianKellyIT]

Error 137 is the FreeBSD OOM killer terminating the pkg process because the system ran out of memory during the upgrade. The SG-1100 only has 1GB RAM and a pfSense major version upgrade pulls a lot of packages into memory simultaneously.

A few things that help on memory-constrained devices like the SG-1100:

Before starting the upgrade, stop any resource-heavy packages. If you are running Snort, Suricata, pfBlockerNG, or ntopng, disable them first from their respective settings pages. Each one can hold 100-300MB in RAM.

Close all browser tabs pointing at the pfSense WebGUI except the one running the upgrade. The WebGUI's PHP processes consume RAM, and multiple open sessions add up.

If you have SSH access, you can run the upgrade from the console instead of the WebGUI. Go to option 13 (Update from console) in the menu. The console upgrade uses less RAM than the web-based one because it skips the PHP/web layer entirely.

If it still fails with 137, try from the console with the GUI web server temporarily stopped:

pfSsh.php playback svc stop nginx

Then run the upgrade from the shell.

The ZFS pool version discussion later in this thread is a separate issue from the OOM. The 137 error needs to be resolved first before worrying about ZFS compatibility.

[NGUSER6947]

@RianKellyIT Ok thank you. I'll try your suggestions.

I have Nexus, pfBlockerNG, and WireGuard packages installed. I don't think I have any need for Nexus; is there any reason I can't simply remove that one entirely?

[SteveITS]

@NGUSER6947 Nexus is required. Per other threads it’s a package to allow for separate updating, but uninstalling can break pfSense. I believe that’s blocked in 26.03.

You could also restart before the upgrade (the upgrade guide suggests this anyway).

FWIW yesterday I upgraded two 1100s without issue, that had had problems before. Just uninstalled pfBlocker as I normally do.

[NGUSER6947]

@SteveITS

I was able to get it upgraded. I first disabled pfBlockerNG then ran the update via the console.

Appreciate the help everyone!

[SKova]

I was able to update my SG-1100 with no issues. I did remove pfBlockerNG (it has been disabled for some time now) and I removed the other packages that were not being used. Cleaned up the Rules left behind from pfBlocker and then rebooted. It rebooted really quick (compared to previous times) and the update took 5-10 minutes. There reboot to the new version was pretty fast.

Opservations:

• The CPU Usage is significantly lower, even right after reboot.
• The responsiveness of the GUI, very fast. Super happy about that change.
• It did reinstall Nexus, although I am not using on this setup.

Overall, very smooth update and happy with the new speed of the GUI.

Great job @netgate !