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Using console upgrade

The firmware upgrade via the webGUI has issues from time to time. Right now it seems to be affected by a Lighttpd bug for some people, when they upgrade Lighttpd dies and hence the webGUI isn’t accessible (console option 11 restarts it).

The console upgrade was added a while back to work around difficulties when upgrading from the web interface. I prefer upgrading this way because I can just paste in the URL to the update file, and it downloads and installs automatically.

To use the console upgrade, enable SSH on the Advanced page, and use your SSH client of choice to log in (username root, password is your webGUI admin password).  From the console menu, select option 13. You can then select whether to update from a URL or a local file. You can also do this from the actual console of the machine, but most would probably prefer doing it remotely.

This entry was posted by on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “Using console upgrade”

  1. Erik Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 12:40 am

    I guess this is not working for the embedded version?

  2. Chris Buechler Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

    Works fine on more recent embedded versions that have the feature. I don’t recall exactly when it was added, it’s been a few months I believe.

    Embedded users need to use the Embedded upgrade file available from:
    http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD6/RELENG_1_2/updates/

  3. Tiny pfSense updates « FreeBSD - Reliable, Flexible and Secure Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 5:38 pm

    [...] pfSense Chris Buechler put two posts on the pfSense blog – one about using the ”console upgrade“ (there’s a bug in Lighttpd) [...]

  4. Alexander Fuchsstadt Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    Won’t work on embedded because of the filesystem on the cf is too small. While unpacking the archive the fs limit will be reached. After having applied a “larger” embedded image to the cf, updates will work

  5. Chris Buechler Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    I could have sworn people have used it on embedded… I’ll check into it.

  6. Mike Stolove Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    Works on embedded (Soekris 4801) to apply current 1.3RC snapshots, but only after manual upgrade to 1.3RC.

  7. Olivier van der Wiele Says:
    October 31st, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    I just did an upgrade from 1.2-RC2 to 1.2-RC3 via GUI and that worked fine. Platform: embedded on VIA C3 256MB RAM / 1 GB CF

    It might be that memory size has impact on available space for upgrade. Soekris has only 128MB.

    I will test upgrade via console as well

    # df -h
    Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
    /dev/ufs/pfSense 111M 61M 41M 60% /
    devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
    /dev/md0 38M 68K 35M 0% /tmp
    /dev/md1 19M 6.1M 11M 35% /var
    /dev/ufs/pfSenseCfg 1.8M 737K 985K 43% /cf
    devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /var/dhcpd/dev

  8. Beat Siegenthaler Says:
    November 2nd, 2007 at 8:11 pm

    Tried first time console update (via ssh!!!) on WRAP with 512MB Flash Image.
    From 1.2-RC2 to RC3 all went fine. Duration about 20 minutes. Good Stuff ;-)

  9. sullrich Says:
    November 7th, 2007 at 9:10 pm

    Fixed in 1.2-RC3 (upgrade issues on embedded).

  10. Martin Says:
    January 2nd, 2009 at 12:41 am

    Will it work to do a console upgrade from 1.2 to 1.2.1? Or is reflashing the CF the only real option?

  11. Chris Buechler Says:
    January 2nd, 2009 at 1:42 am

    It may, but be prepared to reinstall just in case.

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