Rough edges around packages…

[rcfa]

Ever since the crashing pfSense required a recovery of the system, every OS upgrade after ends up with the package installation never ending. But from what I can tell, everything (I use) is running fine. I know of course how to manually clear the package lock, but with the next upgrade it's the same again. How can I establish what's throwing a fit here?

Also, and that has been the case for a long time, but given the development nature of the software I didn't mention it, there are oddities in how some packages act. Given that the release cycle slowly but surely nears the end, I think some of these things require some attention; not sure if that's a matter of the packages, 2.1, or the interaction thereof.

But these packages need to be manually started by going to their page and hitting the "save settings" button, even though I don't change any settings, otherwise they just wont be active after a reboot:

aprwatch
darkstat
iperf (also: both client and server tabs don't properly redraw after hitting the save button)

The following show up as not running, no matter what, even though at least the vhosts package is running:

dansguardian (always produces a ton of messages about missing AV database, etc.)
widentd
vhosts-http

The following are unpredictable:

snort (sometimes runs automatically, sometimes doesn't run at all, whether I start it manually or not)

There may be issues with other packages, but since I'm not actively trying to use them, I'm not sure if I don't know what I'm doing, but they won't start up in their default configurations:

freeradius2
ipguard
phpservice
nut
stunnel

Most of these packages I'm currently not actively using, but I plan to use in the future for one reason or another, or they were installed when I was researching which packages can live with each other. Given that pfSense has no compatibility check when installing mutually exclusive packages, my strategy was to simply install everything that is compatible with each other, thus lowering the changes that I hose my system later by accidentally installing something that's not compatible; this way, it's on the system when I need it, disk space isn't an issue.

[Nachtfalke]

Since pfsense 2.1 is using .pbis the packages are independent from eacht other. Each package uses its own dependencies and other packages do not influence this package.

But you should check if your packages are testes and do work with pfsense 2.1:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,50603.0.html

[rcfa]

@Nachtfalke:

Since pfsense 2.1 is using .pbis the packages are independent from eacht other. Each package uses its own dependencies and other packages do not influence this package.

But you should check if your packages are testes and do work with pfsense 2.1:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,50603.0.html

That may be the case in the strict sense of the definition of package dependencies, and it's a progress over earlier versions, but there are other things. Like nothing stops you from installing two packages that do the same thing, which is easy to do, because several packages do multiple things, and most are not listed by function but by some fantasy name that the project gave itself, which incidentally is also then a problem in the menus, because related functions are not grouped, which they were if things were named according to the service they provide. Example: "http proxy" instead of SquidGuard, "http server" instead of apache, etc.
The project name could follow the description in parentheses or something like that but the name shouldn't obscure the function.