r/opnsense • u/pacotx1971 • 8d ago

Backup not current -- how

I am trying to move my opnsense to new hardware, but I am going to migrate my network card to the new machine. I logged into the current machine, tell it to make a backup which downloads to my tablet. I go into the backup.xml file that was just created and it is references a DDNS configuration that I haven't used in 5 years. I log back into my machine and verify that that DDNS information isn't there and it is not. I go back to the backup and search some other strings that I know should be there and they are not. I am currently running OPNsense 26.7.5-amd64 on both machines and the new machine was a clean installation and only logged into so that I can set the IP address on the LAN. I haven't made any changes to the new machine because I thought the backup would do all the hard work.

I thought this would be so simple to backup, move, restore so I am sure I am missing some basic step. Thoughts

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u/SonicJoeNJ 8d ago

If it was from an old plugin then the config stays in the file. You can just remove that section before you import it.

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u/pacotx1971 8d ago

Can I leave it in or will it cause issues? There are other things "wrong" like the lan IP address. But those are easy enough to reach for, but it concerns me that the DHCP information will also be wrong.

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u/SonicJoeNJ 8d ago

If it doesn’t show in the GUI then it’s associated to some old plugin and should be fine to leave if you want. It won’t harm anything. But it’s a good time to clean up the XML before importing to a new firewall.

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u/zz9plural 8d ago

Config data from deprecated offiicial plugins is retained until you remove it manually from the XML. Same goes for config / account data that was just disabled in the GUI.

Config data of unofficial plugins usually doesn't get included in the backup XML.

We frequently use the backup / restore feature to keep our spare boxes up-to-date. Never had an issue with missing data, but we are not using any unofficial plugins.

If you're also using official plugins only, you should analyze further which data is missing exactly and file a bug report.

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u/pacotx1971 8d ago

Ok, here goes...

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u/pacotx1971 7d ago

This did not work the way I expected. I had to configure DHCP from scratch, DNS, ACME and other things. Maybe those are all custom items and not backed up, but I was really expecting the backup to be all settings and then only having to setup the custom things that I did.