We are excited to announce the release of pfSense® Plus software version 21.02.2 and pfSense Community Edition (CE) software version 2.5.1, now available for new installations and upgrades!

For more details about the distinctions between pfSense Plus and pfSense CE software, read the pfSense Plus Announcement. Customers running the Factory Edition of pfSense software version 2.4.5-p1 and older can upgrade in-place automatically to pfSense Plus software version 21.02.2 as with any other previous upgrade.

These new releases correct issues identified in recent releases which affected a variety of functions.

Out of an abundance of caution, the kernel WireGuard implementation has been removed from these releases.

To ensure that the upgrade does not result in a broken installation, the upgrade process will not proceed until all WireGuard instances are removed from the firewall configuration.

See the blog post about WireGuard removal for more details.

pfSense Plus software version 21.02.2-RELEASE updates are available now. For installation images, contact Netgate TAC.

pfSense software Community Edition version 2.5.1-RELEASE updates and installation images are available for download now.

Highlights

pfSense Plus and pfSense CE updates include, but are not limited to, corrections for:

  • An updated version of OpenSSL to address CVEs
  • Interface and routing issues which in certain cases could lead to problems with responding to requests from non-default WANs, problems determining gateways, configuring routes, and route lookups
  • IPv6 gateways obtained via Router Advertisements
  • IPsec issues with tunnel configuration, identifiers, and status
  • OpenVPN authentication and negotiation
  • Certificate handling
  • Dashboard behavior
  • DNS resolver stability
  • And more

For more details, see the Release Notes, Redmine (Plus), and Redmine (CE).

Important Information

Please note, as stated in a March 2019 blog post, AES-NI is not required to run pfSense software version 2.5.1; this also applies to pfSense Plus 21.02.2.

A few noteworthy items about running or upgrading to pfSense Plus software version 21.02 or pfSense CE software version 2.5.0:

  • The built-in Load Balancer has been deprecated and is not present in this release

    • Users can migrate to the HAProxy package for most use cases covered by the old Load Balancer

  • Several abandoned and deprecated packages have been removed, including:

    • OpenBGPD (use FRR instead)
    • Quagga OSPF (use FRR instead)
    • routed
    • blinkled
    • gwled

See the previous release announcement for additional details.

Upgrade Notes

IMPORTANT: Proceed with caution when upgrading pfSense software while COVID-19 travel restrictions are in effect.

During this time of travel limitations, remote upgrades of pfSense software should be carefully considered, and avoided where possible. Travel restrictions may complicate any repair of any issue, including hardware-related issues that render the system unreachable. Should these issues require onsite physical access to remedy, repair of the issue may not be possible while travel restrictions related to COVID-19 are in effect.

Due to the significant nature of the changes in this upgrade, warnings and error messages are likely to occur while the upgrade is in process. In particular, errors from PHP and package updates may be observed on the console and in logs. In nearly all cases these errors are a harmless side effect of the inconsistent state of the system during the upgrade from changes in the operating system, libraries, and PHP versions. Once the upgrade completes, the system will be in a consistent state again. Only errors which persist after the upgrade are significant.

Always take a backup of the firewall configuration prior to any major change to the firewall, such as an upgrade.

Do not update packages before upgrading! Either remove all packages or do not update packages before running the upgrade.

The upgrade will take several minutes to complete. The exact time varies based on download speed, hardware speed, and other factors such installed packages. Be patient during the upgrade and allow the firewall enough time to complete the entire process. After the update packages finish downloading it could take 10-20 minutes or more until the upgrade process ends. The firewall may reboot several times during the upgrade process. Monitor the upgrade from the firewall console for the most accurate view.

If the update check fails, or the update does not complete, run pkg install -y pfSense-upgrade to ensure that pfSense-upgrade is present.

Consult the Upgrade Guide for additional information about performing upgrades to pfSense software.

Upgrading to the new release

Remove all WireGuard interface assignments and tunnels before attempting the upgrade, otherwise the upgrade will not run.

Updating from an earlier release to this release is possible via the usual methods:

From the GUI:

  • Navigate to System > Update
  • Set Branch to Next stable version
  • Click Confirm to start the upgrade process

From the console or ssh:

  • Select option 13 OR select option 8 and run pfSense-upgrade

Update Troubleshooting

See Upgrade Troubleshooting for the most up-to-date information on working around upgrade issues.

If the update system does not offer an upgrade to the current release or the upgrade will not proceed, take the following steps:

  • Navigate to System > Updates
  • Set Branch to Latest stable version

  • Refresh the repository configuration and upgrade script by running the following commands from the console or shell:

    pkg-static clean -ay; pkg-static install -fy pkg pfSense-repo pfSense-upgrade

Reporting Issues

This release is ready for a production use. Should any issues come up with pfSense Plus software version 21.02.2 or pfSense CE software version 2.5.1, please post about them on the the forum or on the /r/pfSense subreddit.

Thanks!

pfSense CE software is Open Source

For those who wish to review the source code in full detail, the changes are all publicly available in three repositories on GitHub:

Download

Downloads for New Installs

Using the automatic update process is typically easier than reinstalling to upgrade. See the Upgrade Guide page for details.

Supporting the Project

Our efforts are made possible by the support of our customers and the community. You can support our efforts via one or more of the following.

  • Official appliances direct from Netgate. Our appliances are the fast, easy way to get up and running with a fully-optimized firewall.
  • Commercial Support – Purchasing support from us provides you with direct access to Netgate Global Support.
  • Professional Services – For more involved and complex projects outside the scope of support, our most senior engineers are available under professional services.