I ran across this issue of having the pfSense’s “Available Packages” under “System” > “Package Manager” show up empty.
I “stupidly” followed the troubleshooting steps, and discovered that everything was back at base release (i.e. version x.y.0), and had to (fortunately, successfully) update both pfSense and packages back to latest.
Several different Netgate forums pointed to DNS issues, but I confirmed that I could resolve locally (i.e. my DNS resolver was “listening” correctly on localhost/127.0.0.1 and pkg-static info -x pfSense, pfSense-repoc and host pkg01-atx.netgate.com all worked without issue).
So, it appeared that two fixes were offered:
- just hit “Save” on the “System” > “Update” > “Updates Settings” page (without changing anything), or
- if you don’t use IPv6, ensure to set your WAN interface “IPv6 Configuration Type” to “
DHCP6” instead of “None” (under “Interfaces” > “WAN”)
I tried #2 and have pulled the repository but reverted the change (I hate setting something I know I’m not going to use), so will update later on if the issue reoccurs and I can test #1.
