ok, after a bit of jiggery I've managed to convert the plugin into a script that always installs the latest beta (the one in the plugin is about 4 months old).  I've added a check at the start for connectivity, just in case my pfsense VM hasn't fully booted in time:   if ping -q -c 1 -W 1 google.com >/dev/null; then echo "The network is up - proceeding" else echo "The network is down - pausing" sleep 1m fi Full code below if anyone wants to give it a try.  I'm not sure it's