Upgrade screen never goes away without two reboots!

zenny

Hi upgrading to the new snapshots release always leaves the gui message (see attachment) "Packages are currently being reinstalled in the background. Do not make changes in the GUI until this is complete." forever even after console reports completion of upgrade, thus requirieng two reboots every update. This created confusion.

Is this a bug or feature?

perennial_upgrade_status.png_thumb

mejpickles

I had the same problem after updating

zenny

I tried to upgrade to pfSense 2.1 snapshot from 20130626 and rebooted, but it (maybe premature reboot but the console showed up updated and rebooted on its own) all messed up the packages and configurations. I updated second time. But what confuses me is how much time shall one wait after and upgrade (if one ingores the gui warning)?

It seems very confusing to me at least. Could any developers reply to this confusion? Or shall I open a bug if it is not a feature?

phil.davis

It would be handy if the package install gave a "progress score", then people could tell if it seemed to be making some progress. Perhaps the package install scripts could write some progress information to a text file (what packages have been installed, what is currently being installed [with approximate progress %], what it knows remains to be installed). Then the GUI interface warning could have a place to click to see progress. That would help people get a feel for whether it was working, or something died in the background.
Without having looked at the code, conceptually it sounds easy to do :)
@zenny - add a request to RedMine. You decide if it is a bug or feature.

jimp

We may have to add a bit of logging to the package reinstall code.

It's not unusual for a package to fail for one reason or another, and pfSense takes the blame even though it's typically a problem with the package that causes it. :-)

zenny

@jimp: Yes, it is understandable. But what merits 2.1 is it's inclusion of tinc which is more robust than other VPN's for mesh networking.

With the tinc unstability plus the persistent upgrade screen for more than 24 hours makes it difficult to assess whether the upgrade is finished or not. It puts pfSense users in limbo, I am at the moment even after 24 hours. ;-) and in another machine for 12 hours with modsecurity installation (http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,63925.msg345954.html#msg345954)

Thanks for your reply.

jimp

The longest I've seen one go that actually succeeded was an hour and that was NanoBSD with squid and squidguard on an ALIX

If it has gone that long, check the console for errors. Reset the package lock and manually reinstall your packages.

zenny

@jimp, thanks for the alternative approach to go ahead with the upgrade. Mine is installed onto a HDD.

But even after locking package and reinstalling ModSecurity package, it halts forever (more than two hours) as I posted here: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,63925.0.html.

In the system.log, there is a single line, that reads about this installation:

#clog /var/log/system.log | grep Apache
Jun 27 21:33:23 pfSense0 php: /pkg_mgr_install.php: Beginning package installation for Apache with mod_security-dev .
Jun 27 21:50:21 pfSense0 php: /pkg_mgr_install.php: Beginning package installation for Apache with mod_security-dev .
Jun 28 17:30:25 pfSense0 php: /pkg_mgr_install.php: Beginning package installation for Apache with mod_security-dev .
Jun 28 20:33:51 pfSense0 php: /pkg_mgr_install.php: Beginning package installation for Apache with mod_security-dev .

I checked whether there is a resource shortage and it does not seem so:

last pid: 61373; load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 up 0+09:47:04 20:39:17
65 processes: 1 running, 64 sleeping
CPU: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 0.0% system, 0.0% interrupt, 100% idle
Mem: 268M Active, 819M Inact, 159M Wired, 31M Cache, 112M Buf, 203M Free
Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free

This is obvious that I tried four times since yesterday to install and in a gap of three hours today becuase it halted. How can I overcome these?

jimp

You must get to the console and see what is displayed there when it attempts to reinstall. And then try to get the attention of the package maintainer so they can fix it.

zenny

I executed 'tail -f /var/log/syslog.log' which showed the same line as I have stated. Thereafter I executed 'clog /var/log/system.log | grep Apache' to give a sense how long tbe inslallation freezes.

I have been trying with two pacakges (one is tinc) and both of them are troublesome! ;-)

jimp

No I mean the actual physical console: VGA or serial.

That's where the output is, not a log.

jimp

I did just add some more logging to the package reinstall process though, but it can only do so much.

https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/2b125a17e91b5b63694de0c272e5f4fd154598da

The bulk of the output only goes to the console and can't go anywhere else.

zenny

@jimp:

No I mean the actual physical console: VGA or serial.

That's where the output is, not a log.

Yes I am on a vga console.

jimp

Then press Scroll Lock immediate after the update, and page up a few times to see what failed.

Usually it will be stuck there in the package reinstall and never drops you to the menu.

zenny

There is no error reports in relation to the ModSecurity package except the line quoted above. It downloads the packages and xml files and finally halts at;

"Executing custom_php_resync_config_command()…"