Cross platform restore?
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Just curious and maybe a bit lazy….
New to pfSense but I did BTFM and have spent many mornings "in the library" RTFM. As I did my research before my first build I saw the only real limitation with this product was the FreeBSD Hardware support. As it happened, I had one of the machines listed as having good compatibility in my pile of old hardware, an HP D530. Since I'm medically retired, I took my time and with the help here (forum) and the book have a perfectly good running I386 build of 2.0.3 running with pfBlocker, NUT, Squid and Snort. All my inbound/outbound idiosyncrasies are resolved and I have a baremetal backup scheme in place. Humming along for several months now (all for my little house in the mountains... overkill, but I like it).
So a friend comes by with a few machines and wants to cobble together a machine with all the best parts and leaves me with a pile of leftovers with which I am able to build an AMD 64 machine... basically an HP DC5750. Obviously a different CPU architecture but the same combination of NICs as in the current pfSense box. The career computer geek in me says this will be the new pfSense box.
Question: Do I need to do the complete manual rebuild or can I restore the config.xml from the working box (I386) over this virgin build (AMD64)??
I mean, I'm probably going to do it anyway as its just a "bench warmer" at this stage, but was wondering if there are any hidden or latent fatal issues that might not show if the restore works?
TIA,
Rick -
Just curious and maybe a bit lazy….
New to pfSense but I did BTFM and have spent many mornings "in the library" RTFM. As I did my research before my first build I saw the only real limitation with this product was the FreeBSD Hardware support. As it happened, I had one of the machines listed as having good compatibility in my pile of old hardware, an HP D530. Since I'm medically retired, I took my time and with the help here (forum) and the book have a perfectly good running I386 build of 2.0.3 running with pfBlocker, NUT, Squid and Snort. All my inbound/outbound idiosyncrasies are resolved and I have a baremetal backup scheme in place. Humming along for several months now (all for my little house in the mountains... overkill, but I like it).
So a friend comes by with a few machines and wants to cobble together a machine with all the best parts and leaves me with a pile of leftovers with which I am able to build an AMD 64 machine... basically an HP DC5750. Obviously a different CPU architecture but the same combination of NICs as in the current pfSense box. The career computer geek in me says this will be the new pfSense box.
Question: Do I need to do the complete manual rebuild or can I restore the config.xml from the working box (I386) over this virgin build (AMD64)??
I mean, I'm probably going to do it anyway as its just a "bench warmer" at this stage, but was wondering if there are any hidden or latent fatal issues that might not show if the restore works?
TIA,
RickYou can just copy it over… should work fine. I do this all the time on new builds. I just do the install, then install the packages I want, then copy over a config.xml that has all the settings I want... then reboot.
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The URL used for firmware updates is stored in the config.xml file and it's different for amd64 installs. Just make sure to check it, and set it correctly, after you restore the config file.
Steve
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The URL used for firmware updates is stored in the config.xml file and it's different for amd64 installs. Just make sure to check it, and set it correctly, after you restore the config file.
Steve
Great point - never thought about that!
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The URL used for firmware updates is stored in the config.xml file and it's different for amd64 installs. Just make sure to check it, and set it correctly, after you restore the config file.
Steve
Thanks Steve!
What might the correct URL's be for the 2 platforms?Rick
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It's in the drop down menu on the updater settings tab. Probably safest to just select it from there but they are, for current release:
For 32bithttp://updates.pfsense.org/_updatersFor 64bit
http://updates.pfsense.org/_updaters/amd64Steve
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It's in the drop down menu on the updater settings tab. Probably safest to just select it from there but they are, for current release:
For 32bitSteve
OK, now I feel like an idiot… of course thats where they are. Duly noted, changed and backed up.
Thanks again,
Rick
