upgrade from 21.7.8 failed

[picasso7it]

Hello everyone

I'm once again having an update problem on one of my many Opnsense firewalls. The firewall is in version 21.7.8, which normally corresponds to a version of Freebsd 12. But the problem is that my system is already running Freebsd 13.

root@pf:~ # opnsense-version
OPNsense 21.7.8 (amd64/OpenSSL)
root@pf:~ # uname -r
13.0-STABLE

If I launch the update via the graphical interface, it simply tells me that everything is up to date and doesn't offer me the option to upgrade to version 22.1.


***GOT REQUEST TO CHECK FOR UPDATES***
Currently running OPNsense 21.7.8 (amd64/OpenSSL) at Thu Feb 12 18:06:00 CET 2026
Fetching changelog information, please wait...
Updating OPNsense repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf: . done
Fetching packagesite.txz: .......... done
Processing entries: .......... done
OPNsense repository update completed. 777 packages processed.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Your packages are up to date.
Checking for upgrades (0 candidates): . done
Processing candidates (0 candidates): . done
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Your packages are up to date.


So I tried to launch the following utility but I get an error

root@pf:~ # fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opnsense/update/refs/heads/master/src/bootstrap/opnsense-bootstrap.sh.in
opnsense-bootstrap.sh.in                              4906  B   34 MBps    00s

chmod 775 opnsense-bootstrap.sh.in
mv opnsense-bootstrap.sh.in opnsense-bootstrap.sh
./opnsense-bootstrap.sh -r 22.1

+ pkg bootstrap
Bootstrapping pkg from pkg+https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:12:amd64/unsupported/base, please wait...
pkg: Error fetching https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:12:amd64/unsupported/base/Latest/pkg.txz: Not Found
A pre-built version of pkg could not be found for your system.
Consider changing PACKAGESITE or installing it from ports: 'ports-mgmt/pkg'.

I tried modifying the following file /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/OPNsense.conf by replacing the following line :
 url: "pkg+https://pkg.opnsense.org/${ABI}/unsupported/base",

with
  url: "pkg+https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/22.1/latest",

and if I restart the bootstrap pkg, I get the following message:

root@pf:~ # pkg bootstrap
The package management tool is not yet installed on your system.
Do you want to fetch and install it now? [y/N]: y
Bootstrapping pkg from pkg+https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/22.1/latest, please wait...
Verifying signature with trusted certificate pkg.opnsense.org.20210903... done
pkg-static: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected.  Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended
Installing pkg-1.17.5_1...
pkg-static: wrong architecture: FreeBSD:13:amd64 instead of FreeBSD:12:amd64


root@pf:~ # pkg bootstrap -f
The package management tool is not yet installed on your system.
Do you want to fetch and install it now? [y/N]: y
Bootstrapping pkg from pkg+https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/22.1/latest, please wait...
Verifying signature with trusted certificate pkg.opnsense.org.20210903... done
pkg-static: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected.  Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended
Installing pkg-1.17.5_1...
pkg-static: wrong architecture: FreeBSD:13:amd64 instead of FreeBSD:12:amd64
Extracting pkg-1.17.5_1: 100%

root@pf:~ # pkg install opnsense
pkg: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected.  Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended
Updating OPNsense repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf: 100%    163 B   0.2kB/s    00:01
Fetching packagesite.pkg: 100%  221 KiB 226.2kB/s    00:01
Processing entries:   0%
pkg: wrong architecture: FreeBSD:13:amd64 instead of FreeBSD:12:amd64
pkg: repository OPNsense contains packages with wrong ABI: FreeBSD:13:amd64
Processing entries: 100%
Unable to update repository OPNsense
Error updating repositories!




Thanks for your good ideas.

Best Regards,

Thierry

[franco]

Hi Thierry,

21.x is so old it's difficult to give proper instructions on recovery with historic tools that likely don't support this or that magic we've added over the years.

This may help... there's still a lot of stuck old binary packages while you are on a newer base system:

# pkg bootstrap -f


Cheers,
Franco