"Unable to check for updates" and no packages to install

Networking & Firewalls
1

Netgate XG-1537, pfSense 21.02.2

2 x WAN

4 DNS servers added. Set each WAN for two of them. All 4 DNS servers are unique.

Still not able to find updates or packages to install. Everything is running fine, but I need to add pfBlocker and prefer to upgrade the software.

2

If it can ping things then it still sounds like DNS, try rebooting and check for rules that you might have blocking DNS.

3

I can ping from inside of the firewall to an FQDN and it will resolve and ping fine. I can also do this from the ping in pfSense.

It is difficult to reboot. I have to plan that as the company is at work almost 24/7 all days.

No rules are blocking port 53 as far as I can see.

The only thing I can think of here is the dual wan situation.

4

DNS lookup from pfSense resolves and shows timings to all 4 DNS servers.

5

Have you looked at the logs to see if traffic is being blocked?

6

I had something similar a while back on 2.6.0 CE.
Check under System/Update/Update Settings and see if it’s set to 21.02.2

I accidently clicked on the Dev option on the dropdown (but didn’t install it) and had the same issues.Unable to check for update and nothing listed in the packages.

By changing the Update Settings back to 2.6.0 I got my available packages back but wasn’t able to check for updates.
Everytime I logged back in I had to do the same thing and eventually had to re-install pfSense from backup.

I believe that there is a file you can edit that you can change the version number that it is looking for when checking for updates. The details are on the Netgate forum, just had a quick look but couldn’t find it specifically but it seems to be known about.

Here we go,

7

Here is another possibility. Prior to updating to version 22.05, I had a list of installed packages that showed as having newer versions. I did not notice that the pfSense version itself had an upgrade. I upgraded one or more packages to the newer version, but had not yet updated the pfSense version. After the packages were upgraded, I was “Stuck” in excactly the same situation as you are in. I hate to admit it, but I made this same mistake on my 6100 and my son’s 2100 :).

The way I solved it was to turn the power off on the Netgate appliance (“halt” on my 6100 and pull the plug on my son’s 2100). After a full power off and power back on, both firewalls allowed my to properly update packages (all started to show once again, and I was easily able to upgrade to 22.05 (which I did before updating any other available packages :slight_smile: Live and learn the hard way.

Good luck! Hopefully the power off/reboot will work.

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8

Thank you for all good suggestions. Unfortunately, none of these worked for me. But after a lot of searching, I found a thread to pull on and I eventually ended up here:

This got me to a point where the new version shows in the gui. BUT -

While using CLI, I ran

pkg-static -d update

It gave me this message:

pkg-static: repository pfSense contains packages for wrong OS version: FreeBSD:12:amd64
Processing entries: 100%
Unable to update repository pfSense
Error updating repositories!

Should I still try to do an upgrade through the gui?

9

If it were me I would make a backup and reinstall pfsense. Seems like something is jacked and it looks like you have exhausted a lot of options that still haven’t shown a positive result.

1 Like