OPNsense 25.1.5 just broke my system.

[Shoog]

@Shoog you seem to be in a better place. Something in config only not right, not the whole OS failing to boot.
Have you installed the latest hotfix?

I tried using the console upgraded but it seems to time out and then freeze.
I tried the captive portal fix which seemed to run but made no difference. Identifing the root cause is the tricky bit to resolving what's going on here.

[newsense]

The other pain was the fact that we have a config backup, but the plugins (and their config/data) are not restored. Now I'm back on track, almost, but some plugins I still have to configure them. Tailscale for some reason is not behaving properly, but I'll check later, will probably reinstall it from scratch.

Question is: to prevent this from happening in the future, and shorten the restore cycle, what should I do? take a full image of the drive by pulling it out of the system every once in a while? isn't there a better way to achieve this?

For the official OPNsense plugins all you need to do is to import the config file - check for updates - reboot. The plugins will all be downloaded for you and upon reboot the FW will be working as expected with no additional configuration required.

For third party repos you'll need the configuration file of that plugin you're using, as it is not saved in the OPNsense one.

[Alessandro Del Prete]

That's what I was referring to. I don't use a lot of plugins, but some of them are not "official", so there's no consistent way of having them backed up.

I hope one day we'll be able to have one "backup config" file/archive with all config files of all plugins, official and unofficial, that gets imported easily.

Another annoying thing was having to reformat a usb key with fat32 specifically to reimport the config.xml I had on git. I had it on my Ventoy USB drive, that is exFat, used to reinstall opnsense iso, but it didn't mount it, I had to prepare another one specifically, after trying to understand why it didn't mount it.

Little things, that all summed up make a difference when you're anxiously trying to recover the fw installation.

[cookiemonster]

Another annoying thing was having to reformat a usb key with fat32 specifically to reimport the config.xml I had on git. I had it on my Ventoy USB drive, that is exFat, used to reinstall opnsense iso, but it didn't mount it, I had to prepare another one specifically, after trying to understand why it didn't mount it.

I think I got bit by this sometime in the past. I've asked the question on behalf of users on github now as a feature request (core/issues/8538).

[Shoog]

So things just got considerably worse for me. It seems that the upgrade has somehow trashed my GPT partitions. I performed a factory reset and now my system won't boot and the bios is no longer accessible.
Going to see if I can get it to boot from a USB, but this has gotten mighty annoying.

[bartjsmit]

It seems that the upgrade has somehow trashed my GPT partitions.

That seems more like a hardware problem. Maybe your PSU or RAM is iffy?

[Shoog]

It seems highly improbable that losing my bios and the issue with a failed upgrade are unrelated. The event that triggered a loss of bios was the factory reset. Before the factory reset the bios was accessable. It boots up to the point where it shows the bios for my Ethernet card which is itself accessable - but then as soon as it gets to what would be the normal bios and hand off to the OS it simply shuts down.

EDIT: Turned out that the factory reset re-enabled a case switch. Have bypassed it now and have been able to boot again.

[Shoog]

I think I have got to the root of my issue. The latest update has an incompatible GPT partion for my Fujitsu S920.
I got a version of OPNsense 24.7 running on one disk drive and restored a backup config.xml, works with a few issues with my VPN on wire guard yet to be resolved, probably due to this been an effective rollback from the version I was previously running.

However I then decided to setup the latest version on a separate SSD to see if I could get it up to date. Will not boot at all from this disk complaining about GPT format, throws a hexadecimal table and freezes.
I had noticed some errors regarding GPT before but didn't pay it enough attention.

So unless I can work out why it doesn't like the GPT I am stuck.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You can do a FreeBSD installation with MBR, then use the bootstrap method to turn it into an OPNsense.

[meyergru]

MBR works only for limited disk size - beyond that you need GPT.

But I think that many posts on the internet show the S920 BIOS to be broken w/r to UEFI booting, so you might be better off to try to set BIOS boot.

You could also try this method.

[Shoog]

Thanks for the pointers.
Going to concentrate on getting the working install fully back up and running first. Would like to get it back to 25.1.4 where it was before but can't find clear instructions on how to update to a specific version.

Will then go back and see if I can get the other version working on a separate disk. Funny thing is that this just came out of the blue after successful update through from 24.7

[Shoog]

Got everything up and running again after some funky side tracks along the way to complete reinstalling.
I managed to get it to upgrade all the way to 25.1.5 in the end - so the issues with GPT (which were the root cause of the upgrade fail) seem to have crept in somewhere over the last month or so of uptime. GPT is twitchy and any issues seem to proliferate across multiple HDD and even to the install USB.
In the end I reformatted the SSD I was installing to to FAT32, and reformatted and reinstalled the installer USB.

The issue is whats the best backup strategy since what I thought was adequate completely let me down (which was a Gzipped DD copy of the whole OS which obviously just copied the GPT corruption that had occurred).

Anyway alls good that ends well.

[cguilford]

I'm having issues after upgrading to the 25.1.5_4 as well it updated rebooted and now just freezes at the main opnsens menu screen.

[cguilford]

Is there a place to download the 25.1.4 iso it ran just fine?

[newsense]

Please open a new thread for your issue