To migrate your existing CSF installations from the Way Of The Web version (EOL August 2025) to the new Aetherinox csf-firewall fork, you can perform a straightforward manual or automated update.
The new fork is drop-in compatible with your current configurations and supports all the old paths and settings, so your existing /etc/csf/ directory and rules will remain intact.
Step 1. Backup your existing CSF installation
Before making any changes, back up your CSF configuration and rule sets:
rsync -a /etc/csf /root/csf-backup-$(date +%F)
Or use tar:
tar -czvf /root/csf-backup.tar.gz /etc/csf
Step 2. Disable CSF temporarily
Disable CSF and its daemon to perform the upgrade cleanly:
csf -x
systemctl stop lfd
Step 3. Fetch and install the Aetherinox fork
cd /usr/srcwget https://download.configserver.dev/csf.zipunzip -oq csf.zip
cd ./csfsh install.sh
Your configuration files in /etc/csf/ will remain untouched, as the script only updates binaries and scripts.
Step 4. Verify and restart
After installation:
csf -esystemctl start lfd
Verify that CSF is fully operational:
csf -l
systemctl status lfd
Step 5. Ongoing updates
If you have automatic updates enabled, future updates will now come from the new maintained repository specified in /etc/csf/downloadservers.
This keeps you aligned with Aetherinox’s active security updates and blocklist changes.
To enable automatic updates edit /etc/csf/csf.conf and set:
AUTO_UPDATES = "1"
If you don't have automatic updates enabled, then you will need to manually update when required.
