Anyone else with pfsense plus home lose registration?

Networking & Firewalls
1

I’ve been using pfsense plus home and noticed the other day that the list is empty when I go to available packages. I saw that a new version is out, but the dashboard says I’m up to date. I started digging in and found this message in updates, “Your device has not been registered for pfSense+. Please purchase a pfSense+ subscription to receive future updates.” I am not able to re-register with my key, even though it doesn’t give me any errors.

Did I goof something up, or is this happening to others? Can I revert to CE without reinstalling?

2

I think this maybe down to PFSense 24.03 release.

Netgate changed the licensing with Plus, and with the release of this new edition the free license has probably expired.

PFSense Plus is $129 yearly cost , if you run pfsense on your own hardware

To go back to CE. backup and reinstall CE (does not take that long) - backups are compatible with both editions

3

Am on the old Free Home/Lab licence too - updated to 24.03 (with some trepidation) and all seems to be still working fine - still shows as “Community Support” - went to System/Update and selected the “Current Stable Version 24.03” option.

I’d expect some better warning if the licence was going to expire - presume it does for pay for licences? But then Netgate haven’t been exactly competent with this whole business.

Suspect there may be something wrong with your install? Things to check - has your Device ID changed - it’s calculated based on NIC MAC addresses (can change on VM if you’re not careful) - you may be able to check against old config backups - or rollback if you’ve gone with ZFS install option.

Also, in past the update process broke for IPV6 enabled boxes - you need to find the “prefer IPv4” option (System/Advanced/Networking) to get the updates working again.

4

I did replace the 10G NIC recently. Unfortunately, the server was set up pre ZFS option.

5

That’s the problem then - change of MAC leads to change of device ID - you may be able to change the MAC for the NIC to get the old ID back - that works for VMs so may also work for hardware?

The ID is held in a text file somewhere so there may be other work arounds, or you should be able to ask netgate nicely to renew the licence??

6

Netgate was able to reset the Netgate Device ID associated with the key and the registration kicked back in.

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