Often, we need to restore pfSense, either to recover from a hardware or software failure or to roll back pfSense to a previous point. In this recipe, we will demonstrate how to restore pfSense.
- Navigate to
Diagnostics|Backup & Restore. - Click on the
Backup & Restoretab. - In the
Restore Backupsection, select the subset of data to restore in theRestore areadrop-down menu (or leave it set toAll):
- Next to Configuration file, click on the
Browsebutton and use the dialog box to navigate to an XML backup file that you previously saved. - If the backup file is encrypted, check the
Encryptioncheckbox and enter the password in the Password text field. - Click on the Restore Configuration button. A dialog box will appear, asking you to confirm that you want to restore the configuration. The firewall will reboot after restoration is complete.
- If there are packages to restore, click on the Reinstall Packages button.
In this recipe, we used the backup XML file generated in the previous recipe, and used it to restore pfSense.
There is another way of restoring pfSense, without even having to save an XML file. From the console/SSH, menu item 15 is Restore recent configuration. The options for the command are as follows:
- List backups: Lists the last 30 backups, with backup #30 being the most recent
- Restore backup: Restores one of these 30 backups
- Quit: Returns to the main menu
This can be useful if you need a quick and dirty way to roll back a system. If you need to restore a system to factory defaults, you can select menu item 4.