Upgrading from 32bit to 64bit Platform

albert.miclat

Hi All,

Currently my firewall is running 32bit architecture (Virtual Machine) im planning to upgrade to 64bit platform

Looking into Upgrade Guide they say
Changing architecture (32 bit to 64 bit or vice versa) during upgrade
Upgrading a 32 bit system to 64 bit, or vice versa, is not supported. If you want to change architecture you should reinstall and restore the configuration.
The config is the same on both versions.

So, i did a fresh 64bit install then tried to upload the configuration then i realized that one of my Interfaces name is different, so its complaining for Interface mismatch.

My current interface name is
WAN : em0
LAN : bce0

My New interface name is
WAN : em0
LAN : em1

Is there any way i can rename em1 to bce0? anyone came across to this issue?

Hope to hear soon.

Thanks,
Albert

KOM

The interface names are based on the chipset used by the NIC. You might have better luck doing a find/replace in your config file to change all instances of bce0 to em1. I've never tried it so my suggestion may be total nonsense.

Edit: I just exported a backup and looked at it. The interface seems to be defined only once without any spooky custom magic, so you should be able to just change the name in the config and reload it.

dotdash

Can't you just re-assign the interfaces? Whenever I restore a config with different interfaces it allows me to re-assign and save before it reboots…

charliem

@dotdash:

Can't you just re-assign the interfaces? Whenever I restore a config with different interfaces it allows me to re-assign and save before it reboots…

Yes, and you can also do it later via the console (or ssh) menu, option #1

KOM

Pfft, those slick suggestions are no match for the hacky, seat-of-our-pants flyboy heroics we require! ;D

johnpoz

"im planning to upgrade to 64bit platform"

Why would be my question.. Your running it VM - does it need more ram? I don't see the point of moving to 64 bit? Seems like your causing yourself pain for now reason?

AhnHEL

He might have read this

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=84679.0

Derelict

I have had pretty poor luck with reassigning interfaces using the GUI/CLI when moving to new hardware. Particularly where VLANs are involved.

Hand-editing the backup file is much more reliable for me. Just be sure you don't just blanket search and replace on the file. I guarantee there will be at least one "em0" in a certificate, key, or rrd data.

johnpoz

Ok lets say he did read that, so the next version he goes to he should plan on moving to 64.. But why do the extra work on something that is clearly working because in some 2.x line after 2.2 they will at some point pull 32bit.. For all we know that could be version 3.4..

I like to do a clean install when major changes. I can see where in some configs it might be a pain. But I just take a screen dump of rules, and then do a clean install and put your rules back. When I go to 2.2 maybe I will do 64 vs 32..

cmb

NICs are named by their driver type. They can't be renamed. There's no way you reinstalled and ended up with different NICs unless you switched hardware in the process. Just re-assign the NICs either manually in the config, or after you restore the config. That's very easy and trouble-free.

Where you have complex interface scenarios, like VLANs and lagg and bridging, things can be a bit more complicated. Editing the config manually is definitely the easiest route there. If you do edit the config manually, be careful, and never do a blind mass search and replace. Verify every replacement is actually an interface (granted there will only be 1 instance unless you have a more complex interface scenario). There's a good chance you have certificate or other data that happens to contain, say, "em1", and if you replace every instance of "em1" you'll break things.