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    Q: How to troubleshoot failed package installation?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • J Offline
      jimmy_1969
      last edited by

      Hi Guys,

      Just jumped onboard the Pfsense train a while ago. One thing that bugs me (pun intended) is failed package installs. Been googling this subject but found nothing helpful.

      During package installation the install log is shown in the GUI. But sometimes the package installation fails and the GUI log is no longer updated, nor showing any error message. I have tried doing trail on system.log but without seeing any useful info related to the failed install. As a new adaptor to Pfsense from other Linux based systems, this is a major hurdle to overcome. Being able to troubleshoot and rectify a failed installation script or dependency is a pretty basic capability.

      So my question to all gurus out there is simply: what is the best strategy for troubleshooting failed package installations? Can the GUI install log level be increased? Other system logs to monitor? CLI dependency checks? Etc.

      B R

      //Jimmy

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      • C Offline
        charliem
        last edited by

        Not specific to package installs (or fails), but one hurdle of working in the shell is to figure out that most or all of the log files are in 'circular' format.  That is, the size is fixed by the system (configurable in status -> system logs -> settings), and never grow; new data replaces the oldest data.

        To view them, you must use the 'clog' command rather than cat or tail; 'clog' works like cat, and 'clog -f' works like 'tail -f' except you get the whole file.

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        • E Offline
          Evad
          last edited by

          @jimmy_1969:

          During package installation the install log is shown in the GUI. But sometimes the package installation fails and the GUI log is no longer updated, nor showing any error message.

          Not sure if this is helpful or not … but I ran into similar problems installing Snort and other packages. Sometimes it worked but other times the installation would just stop and no errors in the GUI log. :'(
          For me it turned out to be a problem using Window 8.1 and Firefox 37.
          Once I moved back to XP and Firefox 37 then the GUI would finish the install every time without error. ;D

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