NG Firewall 16.2 is now available

[oj88]

I might've accidentally stumbled upon something that could get Untangle to reveal the Upgrade button....

I went and checked out Config>Upgrade but it still showed "No upgrades available". I did it 4 or 5 times for good measure... still with the same results.

I then went casually to Config>About and walked through the Server tab (took a few seconds to populate) and then the Licenses tab. When I went back to Config>Upgrade, the Upgrade button was there.

I don't know if my going through those motions actually did it, but it's probably worth a try if you're itching for the Upgrade button to come out.

And oh, my update went smoothly.

[sky-knight]

The upgrade is rolled out by controlling which UIDs get it via apt, there's nothing you can do on the client side of this equation to change it.

You just happened to be rolling around in the UI when your UID was pointed at the update.

[jcoffin]

FYI: Half of the UT NGFW should have 16.2 available as of today.

[tangofan]

Just to be clear: I don't have a problem with running 16.2, I just had a problem with restoring my 15.1 configuration onto a 16.2 clean install. But with the intermediate step of going through a lower release and then upgrading to 16.2, it's all good.

I do have some lessons learned though from this experience for my future clean installs of Untangle:

1. Always do a clean install in a VM first to test, whether the new Untangle version will still read the configuration file of your current version.
2. Always have a copy of a partition manager software on a USB stick available in case things go bad. GParted Live seems to be a good choice, it can be installed from Windows using tuxboot.

Background for #2: After I did a clean install, of 16.2 (which didn't read my configuration file), I attempted a clean install of 16.1.1 onto the same unit (3rd party hardware: Protectli FWB6). That install failed, because for some reason the installer couldn't repartition the drive. Had to scrounge to find a partition manager that I could boot from a USB stick. I ended up using GParted Live from a USB Stick, deleting all partitions on the hardware and then install Untangle 16.0.1 (just in case the problem was somehow related to the Untangle release as well).

[sky-knight]

This is all normal, restores are only guaranteed to work one version ahead.

So if you have a v15.1 backup, you need a v15.2 (if it exists) or v16.0 to restore to.

Now fortunately Untangle has versioning built into the restores now, so if it won't work it'll simply tell you. And the version is built into the file's name so anyone can read what it once was. We used to have to guess on all this, and an incompatible restore would either blow up a box, or only work part way.

The Debian installer is also unfortunately fragile right now, and I've seen the behavior you did with the partitioner, and had to do wipe the partition table too. Alternately you can use expert mode to manually re-partition the disk, and the stupid part is simply selecting guided whole disk usually just fixes it. And that's all the NORMAL install does!

None of this is what I'd call ideal, but it is what we're working with.

[orlyp]

The upgrade is rolled out by controlling which UIDs get it via apt, there's nothing you can do on the client side of this equation to change it.

You just happened to be rolling around in the UI when your UID was pointed at the update.

I think dropping by the About page caused it to refresh and somehow send a keepalive flag (for lack of a better term) or otherwise, forced the server side to run my UID against a list of those already green-lighted for the upgrade.

[tangofan]

This is all normal, restores are only guaranteed to work one version ahead.

Yes, I'm certainly not complaining. I knew that, but was just being caught off guard.

The Debian installer is also unfortunately fragile right now, and I've seen the behavior you did with the partitioner, and had to do wipe the partition table too. Alternately you can use expert mode to manually re-partition the disk, and the stupid part is simply selecting guided whole disk usually just fixes it. And that's all the NORMAL install does!

None of this is what I'd call ideal, but it is what we're working with.

Oh, sure. It's really not a problem, when you are prepared for it. This is only my 3rd clean Untangle installation, so I am still encountering "interesting" stuff. And since all installations were a few months apart, it's easy to forget stuff that I came across before.

[sky-knight]

Yes, I'm certainly not complaining. I knew that, but was just being caught off guard.



Oh, sure. It's really not a problem, when you are prepared for it. This is only my 3rd clean Untangle installation, so I am still encountering "interesting" stuff. And since all installations were a few months apart, it's easy to forget stuff that I came across before.

Welcome to open source operating systems! Or... well open source in general. There's a ton of missing polish. And Debian's installer, as well as this whole mess with the link files is a substantial regression.