Waiting for pfSense appliance

Can't wait for the in-development μFW appliance for pfSense. It is expected to be out in 2016 Q3 i.e. as early as July! Here is a image of the product that pfSense devs have been teasing with.

Highlights

• Runs pfSense on ARM
• Size 74mm x 43mm, smaller than a credit card
• 2 GbE ports (not on USB 2.0!)
• 4GB eMMC and microSD card support

 

For full details head on to the product page at ADI Engineering. Also, initial version of manual for the μFW.

pfSense 2.3.1 available.....almost

Warning: Upgrade your firewall after having a proper plan and back out option. As a minimum a snapshot before starting work and backup of the firewall configuration is recommended.


Did a Xenserver setup in the last few days with a pfSense 2.3 instance running on it. After finishing another VM and configuring the setup, what appears on pfSense administration page?

All issues marked for the 2.3.1 release had been closed recently, but didn't know that the update will appear out of the blue without any announcement on the pfSense blog!

Update 1

Tried to upgrade pfSense to 2.3.1.....
>>> Updating repositories metadata...
Updating pfSense-core repository catalogue...
pfSense-core repository is up-to-date.
Updating pfSense repository catalogue...
pfSense repository is up-to-date.
All repositories are up-to-date.
>>> Upgrading pkg... failed.
Failed
Need to wait a bit I think...

Update 2

Seems things are not ready yet
>>> Updating repositories metadata...
Updating pfSense-core repository catalogue...
pkg: http://pkg.pfsense.org/pfSense_v2_3_0_amd64-core/meta.txz: Connection reset by peer
repository pfSense-core has no meta file, using default settings
pkg: http://pkg.pfsense.org/pfSense_v2_3_0_amd64-core/packagesite.txz: Connection reset by peer
Unable to update repository pfSense-core
Updating pfSense repository catalogue...
pkg: http://pkg.pfsense.org/pfSense_v2_3_0_amd64-pfSense_v2_3_0/meta.txz: Connection reset by peer
repository pfSense has no meta file, using default settings
pkg: http://pkg.pfsense.org/pfSense_v2_3_0_amd64-pfSense_v2_3_0/packagesite.txz: Connection reset by peer
Unable to update repository pfSense
Failed

Update 3

Still got the first error above when trying to upgrade via console. Blog has a detailed post about the release now.

Update 4

Went to pfSense forums and noticed others are having similar issues. Need to wait for mirrors to synchronize as one of the packages is not there yet!

root: pfSense-upgrade -d
>>> Updating repositories metadata...
Updating pfSense-core repository catalogue...
pfSense-core repository is up-to-date.
Updating pfSense repository catalogue...
pfSense repository is up-to-date.
All repositories are up-to-date.
>>> Upgrading pkg...
Updating pfSense-core repository catalogue...
pfSense-core repository is up-to-date.
Updating pfSense repository catalogue...
pfSense repository is up-to-date.
All repositories are up-to-date.
New version of pkg detected; it needs to be installed first.
The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

Installed packages to be UPGRADED:
        pkg: 1.6.2 -> 1.7.2_2 [pfSense]

The process will require 91 KiB more space.
2 MiB to be downloaded.
pkg: http://pkg.pfsense.org/pfSense_v2_3_0_amd64-pfSense_v2_3_0/All/pkg-1.7.2_2.txz: Not Found

Final update

Apparently, pfSense was not looking in the right place and was looking in the 2.3.0 folders. Waited for another half an hour and tried again and it downloaded the correct information and was able to find all packages needed for upgrade. 2.3.1 is up and running. Verifying functionality before deleting snapshot.

Checking Firefox Version

I am trying to write a script in Javascript* which would inform a visitor's using Firefox if they are running an older version. Although Firefox does automatically check if there is an update and informs the user, I have seen visitors with versions like 0.8, 1.0.x, 1.5.y (y<11),>

Automatic updates are helpful for home users at least as corporate users might not have the rights to upgrade their software without administrator access. However, informing them with a visual warning on a web page could help in avoiding potential problems of using vulnerable versions.

Presently, the script checks the CVS branch tag i.e. rv: value with a hard coded value and prints a warning for users with older versions. Is there any way that the hard coded value(s) can be acquired automatically from say mozilla.org server and checked with visitor's user agent information? I don't know much about AJAX but would it be helpful in this case? No AJAX compatibility issues as the only browser we are checking is Firefox.

* - using Javascript because it runs client side, is available to all Firefox users and those who have disabled Javascript would most likely not need the warning to know it.