Fixing The OPNsense Package Manager

I recently had a very unusually rough time updating OPNsense. I use OPNsense as a backup backdoor management VPN server at various data centers. Two upgraded just fine to 22.7.1; the others appeared to break at 22.7_4.

I kept getting errors similar to the following:

***GOT REQUEST TO CHECK FOR UPDATES***
Currently running OPNsense 22.7_4 (amd64/OpenSSL)
Fetching changelog information, please wait... fetch: transfer timed out
Updating OPNsense repository catalogue...
pkg: https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/22.7/latest/meta.txz: Operation timed out
repository OPNsense has no meta file, using default settings
pkg: https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/22.7/latest/packagesite.pkg: Operation timed out
pkg: https://pkg.opnsense.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/22.7/latest/packagesite.txz: Operation timed out
Unable to update repository OPNsense
Error updating repositories!
pkg: Repository OPNsense cannot be opened. 'pkg update' required
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Your packages are up to date.
***DONE***

At first, I thought this was a mirror or DNS problem. However, switching mirrors didn’t help, and my DNS servers checked out.

After fiddling around with a few different settings for each environment, I found disabling Settings -> General -> Gateway switching allowed the package updater to work again. However, one instance did need a reboot to start working.

The instances that needed this change either had dual WAN capability or were OVA copies of instances with dual WAN configurations.

As for why disabling Gateway Switching worked, I can’t say. However, turning Gateway Switching back on after an update to 22.7.1 appeared to break the updater again.

See part two of this post for more developments Fixing The OPNsense Package Manager Part 2

Happy Routing!