Remote upgrade 17->18 failed, what is expexted

[ikkeT]

Hi,

I'm asking for tips what's to be expected after upgrade gone bad with remote box.

I do have a OPNSense at remote location. Same HW as my home, apu2. At home I've successfully upgraded from 17 something to current every time there has been upgrade available. This remote box I tried to uograde yesterday for the first time in about half a year. I had ovpn on, and at first the uograde upgraded pkg. Then I suppose lot of 17 stuff. And a reboot I recall. Then the next upgrade required unlocking the 18 upgrade. I did.

After I then pressed the upgrade to 18 button, I got told it takes several reboots. I allowed it to go forward. The last message was about upgrading kernel and reboot. The next boot never brought up the OVPN or dynamicDNS update.

Luckily it's NATting as should, so people get to internet. I need to drive there having serial cable to see how to bring it back.

What do you think I'll face there, and what are the recovery actions?

If it's the worst, messed up install, will it work if I clean install 18 and import the 17 backup config?

Thumbs up reboot would fix it...

[franco]

Hi there,

It depends a bit whether you upgraded from 17.1 or 17.7 and which step started to show remote behaviour change.

NAT changed during 17.7 -> 18.1, rules itself were a larger target in 17.1 -> 17.7.

If the network is still up for local users it may be something trivial like a rule or alias failing to let you in, but it's hard to say why. It would also depend on whether you used OpenVPN to connect there.

Make sure to upgrade to the latest version, it may be on 18.1.1 now, worst case on an intermittent upgrade state which would reveal itself when trying to do the next update. Sorry, but can't be more specific at this point.


Cheers,
Franco

[ikkeT]

I went there and connected the serial. I had this prompt in front of me:

Code: [Select]

db>
which I thought is likely debugger. So I wrote "reboot" there, and it started upgrade - reboot - upgrade cycle. It went on for while, and then eventually booted to 18.1.1. Then I got VPN working, and did the upgrade to 18.1.5. Which again rebooted successfully.

So everything seems to be fine now. What ever glitch it was between 17 -> 18 upgrade, it's over now. Just prepare for being next to the box if you do such upgrade.

[franco]

That's my fault. There was a time in 17.7.x when the box would only automatically escape ddb when the kernel did a panic, not a related ddb enter:

https://github.com/opnsense/core/commit/286bbf65

It may have been a lock-related event that caused ddb to open and that was then waiting for user input. Was fixed in the initial 18.1 and should now recycle automatically under all circumstances.


Sorry,
Franco

[ikkeT]

Ok, good to know it's better nowadays, thanks!