[HowTo] OPNsense Boot Loader Upgrade Summarized

[nero355]

Dear fellow OPNsense users,

I have written a complete document about the OPNsense Boot Loader Upgrade procedure based on what is already written in many topics here on the forum.
However all the information is extracted mainly from the following two :
- https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48145.0
- https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=52579.0
And a lot of that information came from the posts made by Patrick M. Hausen :)

Instead of just Copy->Pasting everything I have done my best to also explain what you are actually doing during the process and which commands do what exactly or how the partitioning layout looks and things like that...

You can read the whole document at GitHUB : https://github.com/nero355/OPNsense---Boot-Loader-Upgrade-Summarized

Any comments or questions are welcome ofcourse! ;)



_{I had some weird issue after switching it to Public so I hope that issue won't return, but if it ever does please send me a PM/DM via the forum instead of posting it here in the topic! Thnx!}

[Lucid1010]

It looks like the bootloader upgrade went smoothly.
Do I need to upgrade the bootloader with every OPNsense major upgrade? (ex. v26.7 -> v27.1)

[nero355]

It looks like the bootloader upgrade went smoothly.

NICE! :)

Do I need to upgrade the bootloader with every OPNsense major upgrade? (ex. v26.7 -> v27.1)

I am considering creating a F.A.Q. part with that kind of questions in the future :)

There are multiple answers to that question :
- You don't need to, but you could just in case whenever the underlying FreeBSD Release changes like it did this year : 14.x to 15.x
- Doing it anyway can prevent having issues with upgrading OPNsense/FreeBSD in the future after not having upgraded the Boot Loader for many years in a row as written in some posts here on the forum.
- If you are using ZFS as the File System and you want to update/upgrade your ZPOOL then you need to update/upgrade the Boot Loader first to make sure your OPNsense/FreeBSD will boot succesfully after the next reboot !!

That's all I can think of right now...

[Patrick M. Hausen]

- You don't need to, but you could just in case.
- Doing it anyway can prevent having issues with upgrading OPNsense/FreeBSD in the future after not having upgraded the Boot Loader for many years in a row as written in some posts here on the forum.
- If you are using ZFS as the File System and you want to update/upgrade your ZPOOL then you need to update/upgrade the Boot Loader first to make sure your OPNsense/FreeBSD will boot succesfully after the next reboot !!

Couldn't have said it better.

[nero355]

Couldn't have said it better.

Thanks!

I did a small edit while you posted :)

[Lucid1010]

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=51959.0
https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=29304.0
https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48145.0
https://www.reddit.com/r/opnsense/comments/1v7qqhn/26111_267x_upgrade/

Here are some links and bookmarks I kept from earlier.

Code Select Expand

sha256 /boot/loader.efi /boot/efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi /boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi

Code Select Expand

efibootmgr -v

Code Select Expand

strings /boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi | grep "EFI loader"
Those commands look like they will be helpful as well.
However, what is the reason OPNsense itself doesn't update the bootloader when performing a firmware upgrade?