Tips for upgrading to pfSense 2.4.5

We have received a lot of great comments and questions since announcing the availability of pfSense 2.4.5. Most of the comments have been about the upgrade process and experience. 

The upgrade notes in the pfSense 2.4.5 announcement states "Do not update packages before upgrading pfSense! Either remove all packages or do not update packages before running the upgrade.”

This same guidance can be found in the Upgrade Guide section of the pfSense documentation and in this technical paper. We don’t always recommend uninstalling packages before updating pfSense, but this is a big update and we found that doing so provided the most reliable upgrade experiences during our pre-release testing. Every system and configuration is a little different, here are the steps, with links to the supporting documentation, we recommend to ensure that your upgrade goes smoothly.

  1. Make a backup of your configuration (link)
  2. Make a note of the packages installed on your system
  3. Uninstall the packages installed on your system (link)
  4. Do a pre-upgrade reboot of your system (link)
  5. Update pfSense (link)
  6. Wait. Be patient. Do not turn off the system or reboot the system until the update is complete!
  7. Reinstall your packages

In the rare case that you run into any issues, please read our upgrade troubleshooting section of the pfSense documentation.