Upgrading nanobsd

glennbtn · Sep 21, 2013, 10:38 AM

Hi All

Been looking at upgrading my pfsense running on an Alix board from 2.0 to 2.1. I cant seems to scp the upgrade file over. What ever I try to do to mount the system as have found different instructions about. It keeps saying it's a read only system. I have tried

mount -u -orw /
/etc/rc.conf_mount_rw
mount -uw /

Can anyone advise please

Thanks

Glenn

jasonlitka · Sep 21, 2013, 8:50 PM

Why aren't you upgrading from the Web UI?

glennbtn · Sep 22, 2013, 8:39 AM

I am sure I read somewhere on here that when upgrading on a cf card you can't use the gui and need to login and upgrade from the console. IS this not correct?

Thanks

Glenn

stephenw10 · Sep 22, 2013, 3:27 PM

You can and should use the webGUI. :)

You can use the manual upgrade facility it you're concerned about conectivity or something but you have to then decide which file you need youreslf.

The best and safest way to upgrade IMHO (really just my opinion) is to flash fresh onto a new CF card and restore the config file. It's definitely the safest but it does involve having to have another card and opening the box etc.

Steve

glennbtn · Sep 23, 2013, 9:55 AM

Ok digging deeper it looks like the /tmp folder is only set to 35mg to the gui update will never work

kernel: pid 40331 (lighttpd), uid 0 inumber 95 on /tmp: filesystem full

I have a 4gb cf card installed and looks like loads of space left. Can anyone advise on how I could move the /tmp file where there is space

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ufs/pfsense0 1.8G 168M 1.5G 10% /
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
/dev/md0 38M 416K 35M 1% /tmp
/dev/md1 58M 7.9M 45M 15% /var
/dev/ufs/cf 49M 1.1M 44M 2% /cf
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /var/dhcpd/dev

Thanks

Glenn

phil.davis · Sep 25, 2013, 3:18 PM

/tmp and /var are just memory disks (md0 and md1). On nanoBSD there is nowhere to move them., they live in memory and get created again every boot. The CF card partitions are mounted read-only, and you don't need to mess with that. pfSense mounts them RW when it needs to update the config.
On the CF card there are 2 slices with 2 copies of FreeBSD. When you upgrade, the new version is writtten to the opposite slice. Then the selected slice for boot is swapped, and the system rebooted. It boots from the new slice, and you get the new pfSense+FreeBSD.
The advantage is that, at the console, you can change the boot slice just after the BIOS stuff has run. So you can switch easily between versions if needed. The config is in a partition of its own, accessible from both the other partitions. Take a backup of your config before upgrading, as upgrades usually have some config file conversions, so the config is not always backward portable.
IMHO you should upgrade in-place. It is easy and works. If you have a decent internet connection then use the auto-update from the webGUI. Otherwise, download the upgrade image for your CF card size and use the Manual Update from webGUI to suck it off your local computer and upgrade.