pfSense

In some circumstances pfctl fails to load the rulset after it's updated. It shows errors like:

There were error(s) loading the rules: pfctl: pfctl_rules - The line in question reads [0]: @ 2022-08-04 19:43:08

The ruleset file, /tmp/rules.debug, appears correctly populated.

Trying to load the ruleset manually with verbose logging shows on the same error and not the expected rule list.

Trussing pfctl shows only that is cannot access pf to load the rules after boot:

ioctl(3,DIOCXBEGIN,0xbfbfd9d0) ERR#16 'Device busy'

Most users who have seen this have rebooted and loaded the ruleset successfully but not all.

This is not only immediately after upgrade where there may be components of the previous release still present.

See: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/173923/strange-error-there-were-error-s-loading-the-rules-pfctl-pfctl_rules/

We are seeing this in 22.05-rel but have previously seen similar errors in 2.7 snapshots