Akom's Tech Ruminations

I have an embedded installation of pfSense 2.0.2-RELEASE running from a 512MB compact flash card via an IDE adapter. At the time this was what I had on hand, and it seemed like plenty of space - but now that I tried to upgrade to 2.1, the process failed because there wasn't enough room to download the new image...

I tried all sorts of ways including both webconfigurator upgrade and trying to scp the image to the box, but either way there simply wasn't enough space. "OK" I said, "let me install 2.1 on a new (larger) card and restore the config.xml" .... bad idea. The firewall becomes unbootable when you do this - I think that no upgrade processing is performed on the configuration, it is assumed to be a match for your software version. Not to mention that I tried a 4GB card, but the old Pentium III running the firewall can't handle anything over 2GB!

Ultimately, this is the process:

1. Download and install the same version as what you're running on the larger card
2. Restore your config.xml backup onto the new instance of pfSense. You can do this through webconfigurator, or if you are (like me) running on a temporary rig without multiple NIC's, you can scp it over manually
3. Confirm that the system boots, but don't make any changes (to the interfaces, for instance). Put the card into your real system
4. Now you can use the auto-updater as normal, and your old config.xml will be upconverted