diff --git a/src/opnsense/scripts/suricata/setup.sh b/src/opnsense/scripts/suricata/setup.sh
index a6e0615760..ddc368bc4e 100755
--- a/src/opnsense/scripts/suricata/setup.sh
+++ b/src/opnsense/scripts/suricata/setup.sh
@@ -7,3 +7,6 @@ for SURICATA_DIR in ${SURICATA_DIRS}; do
 	chown -R root:wheel ${SURICATA_DIR}
 	chmod -R 0700 ${SURICATA_DIR}
 done
+
+# make sure we can load our yaml file if we don't have rules installed yet
+touch /usr/local/etc/suricata/installed_rules.yaml