[Freedombox-discuss] Progress report 4

[A. F. Cano]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 11:31:35PM +0000, Esteban Ordóñez wrote:
> Hello A. F. Cano:
> 
> It is difficult to follow your report because:
> the topic does not describe the issue

The main problem, along with other minor issues encountered in the
upgrade were described in the first post that started this thread.

I have followed this original post with details of the other issues I
have solved, and later with linked posts that describe what I have
discovered and attempted in order to solve the main problem, which is
that since the upgrade (from FreedomBox stable/Debian 11 to FreedomBox
stable/Debian 12) no packets originating in the internal zone (2
interfaces) go out to the external zone/interface.  The only way I can
get back to how it was when working properly is to completely disable
the firewall.

I suppose if not using a threaded mail reader it could be difficult to
link the various posts.

> there is no information about the process which you used to install or
> the distro.

Not in the later posts, which were specific to the latest findings and
attempts, but the issue was described in the first one.

To recap: the FreedomBox was set to upgrade automatically to the next
release.  This started automatically and then for 2 days more and more
parts stopped working, as described in the first post, until it became
almost completely non-functional and inaccessibe and I had to stop the
upgrade.  Once I did that, the upgrade ended in about an hour with
aptitude, and after some minor cleanup and a reboot everything seemed to
be working.  All diagnostics pass but no packets flow through from
the internal zone to the external, unless I disable the firewall.

I keep digging into the firewall rules, but it's a steep learning curve
as I've never dealt with this before in this detail.  On a previous
upgrade I encountered the same issue and the only thing that fixed it
was installing a brand new FreedomBox image on a brand new SD card.
I'm hoping to avoid having to do this, with all the manual configuration
this entails.  And yes, I have the backup app doing regular backups to
an internal machine.

In any case, thanks for reading and taking the time to reply.

Augustine