Upgrade Path question

[gsellc]

I'm preparing to put together a configuration to be shipped to a remote site. Is there going to be a "headless" upgrade path from 18.1 to 18.7, or should I just wait until 18.7 becomes the production series. I have options and would rather wait if I'll be unable to upgrade remotely.

[franco]

Hello gsellc,

How headless would you like it?

Upgrading to 18.7 once it's released and unlocked works fine remotely via SSH, although it's not unconditionally recommended as there could always be an issue that requires console access to recover / troubleshoot.

The API works too, but that would require knowledge of the firmware API usage or a tool like https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=6813.0 when it supports major upgrades. (The API support for major upgrades was only recently added by us so it still needs to be implemented.)

You could also use the auto-update cron job which runs firmware updates completely headless and without user interaction into the 18.1.x series... and also use the super secret parameter "ALLOW_RISKY_MAJOR_UPGRADE" to make this work for major upgrades. But it is truly dangerous if used with default mirrors and no prior testing with lab devices as major upgrades can break their default behaviour in a documented way.

Does this help? :)


Cheers,
Franco