Can I upgrade to 25.1.RC1 from 24.7

[TrafficChaos]

Hi,am new to OPNsense

I installed OPNsense a few months ago and updated it again yesterday.

I am wondering if I will be able to update to the upcoming 25.1.RC1
version from the GUI or will going from 24 to 25 require a fresh install.

Thank to all.

[newsense]

Well if you waited so long you can certainly wait a week longer to get on 25.1, no need to take risks when you're relatively new and unfamiliar with a platform.

And as a general rule, OPNsense has security and reliability updates every two to three weeks, waiting for months between upgrades is not particularly secure.

[TrafficChaos]

Well if you waited so long you can certainly wait a week longer to get on 25.1, no need to take risks when you're relatively new and unfamiliar with a platform.

And as a general rule, OPNsense has security and reliability updates every two to three weeks, waiting for months between upgrades is not particularly secure.

I have been updating all along, I said I updated again yesterday, meaning there were previous updates.

My worry is do people on 24.7 need to do a fresh install or will simply clicking
check for updates and updating work for 25.1, or is a fresh install required between
major version updates.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Major version upgrades are always just a couple of clicks in the UI on a live system. Disregarding possible bugs or other failures you bever need to reinstall.

Best install with ZFS so you can use the snapshot feature before any update. Also always keep a current backup of your configuration. Just in case.

[TrafficChaos]

Major version upgrades are always just a couple of clicks in the UI on a live system. Disregarding possible bugs or other failures you bever need to reinstall.

Best install with ZFS so you can use the snapshot feature before any update. Also always keep a current backup of your configuration. Just in case.

Thank you. I did see the feature to take a snapshot, I must investigate if these can be saved to a usb drive for restoration in the event of trouble.
I will leave updating to the latest version for a while so any bugs will be hopefully solved.
Am pleased to hear it should be just a matter of using the update feature under the GUI.

Thanks for posting.

[dseven]

This might apply(?): https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/updates.html#major-upgrades

You can't really backup a snapshot to external storage. The snapshot is a reference to the state of the filesystem at a point in time. The filesystem remembers everything that has changed since that point in time, so if you need to roll back, it knows what to do. It may be possible for ZFS to replicate a snapshot, which would create a complete standalone copy, but AFAIK OPNsense doesn't provide tools to do that (nor to restore using such a copy).

Make regular backups of your config as described at https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/backups.html - you can restore those with a fresh installation if needed. If you have any advanced configuration that was not done through the OPNsense WebUI, you may need to back that up separately (e.g. /usr/local/AdGuardHome/AdGuardHome.yaml if you use that community plugin)

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You can't really backup a snapshot to external storage.

Of course you can.

Code Select Expand

zfs send -R zroot@snapshot | gzip -c > /path/to/some/volume/snapshot-XXYYZZ.gz

It may be possible for ZFS to replicate a snapshot, which would create a complete standalone copy, but AFAIK OPNsense doesn't provide tools to do that (nor to restore using such a copy).

The "zfs" command is present and is all that is necessary for a complete replication, backup/restore to/from external storage, management of snapshots, etc.

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/zfs/#zfs-zfs

[dseven]

I meant that OPNsense doesn't provide any way to do it through the UIs (WebUI or the menu on the console). You can monkey around with all sorts of things in a shell, but I don't consider that a feature of the firewall appliance.