---
canonical: https://solariz.de/posts/22/pfsense_unable_to_check_for_updates/index.md
---Ok, one of our pfSense in Production just did it again, greet me with a friendly "Unable to check for updates".

My first suspect was DNS again, but after checking all resolvers can resolve the **firmware.netgate.com** domain without any issue.

Next Step to try was in cli if the Package manager itself became a zombie or stuck somewhere. What is interesting is that it gave a response that was not expected.

```shell
[22.05-RELEASE][admin@pfSense]/~: pkg-static -d update
pkg-static: invalid url: /pfSense_plus-v22_05_amd64-core
pkg-static: Cannot parse configuration file!
[22.05-RELEASE][admin@pfSense]/~:
```

If you pay some attention to the first error, invalid url, and then followed by something that doesn't look like a full URL at all.

## Fixing Unable to check for updates

I don't know what happened here but let us check the mentioned Configuration file the pfsense update process cannot parse.

You can edit the file /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/pfSense.conf wither in the cli or from GUI Diagnostic>Edit File;

In mine it looked like this:

```shell
FreeBSD: { enabled: no }

pfSense-core: {
  url: "/pfSense_plus-v22_05_amd64-core",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  signature_type: "fingerprints",
  fingerprints: "/usr/local/share/pfSense/keys/pkg",
  enabled: yes
}

pfSense: {
  url: "/pfSense_plus-v22_05_amd64-pfSense_plus_v22_05",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  signature_type: "fingerprints",
  fingerprints: "/usr/local/share/pfSense/keys/pkg",
  enabled: yes
}
```

As you may recognize in Line 4 and 12 are not valid URLs. This is why pfSense is unable to check for updates :( As said, no clue why but the correct entry should look like this:

```shell
FreeBSD: { enabled: no }

pfSense-core: {
  url: "pkg+https://firmware.netgate.com/pkg/pfSense_plus-v22_05_amd64-core",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  signature_type: "fingerprints",
  fingerprints: "/usr/local/share/pfSense/keys/pkg",
  enabled: yes
}

pfSense: {
  url: "pkg+https://firmware.netgate.com/pkg/pfSense_plus-v22_05_amd64-pfSense_plus_v22_05",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  signature_type: "fingerprints",
  fingerprints: "/usr/local/share/pfSense/keys/pkg",
  enabled: yes
}
```

After fixing the url parts in the config file everything was working again as intended. GUI and CLI Updater puling te repo and doing their job.

Good luck fixing!