Update to Specific Release Version

[hhabroad]

Hi,

I've been enjoying using OPNsense but now have more and more to manage.  We have 2 HA clusters setup to allow for testing on one cluster before updating the main cluster.  My question is, is there a way for force the update to a specific version and not just the latest version?  I've been digging around here and all over the internet, and have been trying some testing using opnsense-update using the -r option, but have not found the solution yet.

For example, I currently have version 23.7.10 installed and would like to upgrade the first cluster to 24.1.2, wait a certain amount of time, then complete the same upgrade path on the main cluster.  Would this be possible?

Thanks!

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Why do you want to upgrade to 24.1.2 instead of 24.1.4? I fully understand the "test first, then production" approach, I do it myself. But there are two weeks between updates. You can wait a full week before going from test to production and still have plenty of leeway left.

[hhabroad]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for your reply. My interest in being able to do this is to control what release is used in my environment at any given time. The environment doesn't always allow the current release to be installed a couple days after release on the test cluster, and then on the production cluster prior to the next release date. It would simply be more convenient to be able to say "I want to freeze the release at some date/version so that both environments can be synchronized in relation to the other constraints that exist.

Does that make the "need" clearer?

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

Why aren't you using the OPNsense Business edition if you have such a critical enviorment?

Check out the release cycle of it:

OPNsense 23.10.3 - March 28, 2024
OPNsense 23.10.2 - February 02, 2024
OPNsense 23.10.1 - January 02, 2024
OPNsense 23.10 - November 02, 2023

As you can see, there are 1 to 2 months between releases, because there is more release engineering involved that downstreams tested features from the community edition to the business edition.

That way, you have to do less testing, because it's highly likely there won't be regressions.


Otherwise, why not build the Firewall DVD from source with the release tag that you want with the release toolkit?

https://github.com/opnsense/tools
https://github.com/opnsense/tools/tags

[franco]

Search for "MINT" on this forum. It's actually pretty easy to accomplish your requirement.


Cheers,
Franco

[hhabroad]

Thanks for the push in the right direction Franco.  I'd looked at using the custom flavour option but couldn't fully understand what was expected.  I've now found what to put here for it to work correct.

Is there any room to contribute to documentation for these types of subjects, to make them a bit easier to understand for others in the community?  I'd be more than happy to contribute, I'm just not sure how to contribute.

Ashley

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

You can contribute to the docs here, I think that would be nice.

https://github.com/opnsense/docs

[franco]

I consider these volatile mirror details that may shift between major versions so I would not want to document them in a permanent manner.

The flavour is just the subdirectory on the mirror. E.g.

24.1/MINT/24.1.5/latest


Cheers,
Franco

[bitcore]

For reference, it appears the format suggested by franco simply follows the directory structure that can be seen in the mirror, since apparently you are instructing opnsense to pull down those packages directly. For example, I'm trying to go to 24.7.1 even though 24.7.6 is available.

The mirror that automatically showed up when I browsed to /ui/core/firmware#status on my device is: https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:14:amd64/

That mirror has the folder inside it: 24.7/MINT/24.7.1/latest/
so I will put that into the flavour field and install the version I am after.

[franco]

Yes, correct


Cheers,
Franco