Revision as of 17:35, 23 May 2022

Download pfSense

See that nifty screencap over there on the right?

Look at it again.

It's important...
(You have to start picking options before it'll show you others...)

Stuff it onto a thumbdrive

(really should create command-line instructions for this part)

If working from a Linux Mint machine GUI, right-click & extract the .gz file. Then right-click the resulting .img file & select "Make bootable USB stick".

If working from one of those crappy Windows machines, use Rufus...

If you're playing with a Mac... Yer on yer own for now.

Configure the Hardware

You'll want either a dual NIC or 2 (or more...) NICs.

A hard drive (or SSD) could come in rather handy...

Coming soonTM... (PromiseTM...)

Installing as a VM...

Install pfSense

Boot your machine from the thumbdrive. (UEFI is just fine...)
Accept the copyright.
Select "Install"
Select "Continue with default keymap" (or, really, any keymap you like...)
Select "Auto (UFS)
Choose your disk for the install
- I'd suggest only having one disk in the machine...
Select "Entire Disk
- Yes... Proceed.
Select GPT (GUID Partition Table)
Hit "Finish"
Hit "Commit"
Watch the pretty progress screens... (Or ignore it until it's done... Your choice...)
When you see the "Manual Configuration" screen, Hit "No"
Hit "Reboot"
Go back & configure the machine to actually boot from the drive you installed pfSense onto...

Initial Configuration of pfSense

On first boot, pfSense will ask "Should VLANs be set up now [y|n]?"

Don't bother...

Select your WAN interface
- bce0 on this test machine (T310)
Select your LAN interface
- bce1 on this test machine (T310)
Verify they're selected properly & say yes.
Watch all the "done" messages scroll by (or not... again, your choice...)

After a moment or 3, you'll see the console menu.

*** Welcome to pfSense 2.4.5-RELEASE (amd64) on pfSense ***
 WAN (wan)       -> bce0       -> v4/DHCP4: 192.168.0.26/24
 LAN (lan)       -> bce1       -> v4: 192.168.1.1/24

 0) Logout (SSH only)                  9) pfTop
 1) Assign Interfaces                 10) Filter Logs
 2) Set interface(s) IP address       11) Restart webConfigurator
 3) Reset webConfigurator password    12) PHP shell + pfSense tools
 4) Reset to factory defaults         13) Update from console
 5) Reboot system                     14) Enable Secure Shell (sshd)
 6) Halt system                       15) Restore recent configuration
 7) Ping Host                         16) Restart PHP-FPM
 8) Shell

Enter an option:

It's ALIVE!!!

Configuring pfSense from here...

At this point, you should be able to connect to the LAN port & point a web browser at 192.168.1.1

This is the Web-UI...

Default login is:

Username: admin
Password: pfsense

Change this. Do it NOW!

If you have the WAN port connected to the Internet, you should actually be capable of accessing the outside world right now.

Menu Structure

All the fancy stuff

(Coming soon^TM... Promise^TM...)

Troubleshooting & Repair

Clearing the DNS Forwarder Cache

Source

To clear the DNS Forwarder cache, restart the dnsmasq daemon as follows:

Click Status / Services

Find dnsmasq in the list

Click , or stop the service using then start again with .

Restarting the daemon will clear the internal cache, but the client PCs may still have cached entries.

Flushing the ARP Cache

Click Diagnostics / Command Prompt

arp -d -a

Port Forwarding

Connecting to the VPN machine through the firewall

SEARCH: bind vnc to network interface

Notes & Tips

If you want to be able to ping your network from the outside, Go into Firewall / Rules / WAN & create a rule to allow ICMP.

To adjust the size of your subnet on the internal LAN connections:

Select Interfaces / LANx
Under Static IPv4 Configuration, change the subnet mask (probably from the default /24)
- Just a note, pfSense uses CIDR Subnet Mask Notation

Here's a handy Subnet Cheat Sheet

To allow management access from OUTSIDE your network

WARNING: This is a potential security hole!

Via SSH

Turn on SSHD
Create a firewall rule allowing SSH from outside
- In the Web UI:
- Firewall > Rules, WAN Tab
- Action: pass
- Interface: WAN
- Protocol: TCP
- Source: The IP address or subnet of the client, an alias containing management hosts/networks, or (as a last resort only) Any
- Destination: WAN Address
- Destination port range: 22 (Or the custom port)
- Description: Allow remote management from anywhere (Dangerous!)

Via Web UI

Create a firewall rule allowing SSH from outside
- In the Web UI:
- Firewall > Rules, WAN Tab
- Action: pass
- Interface: WAN
- Protocol: TCP
- Source: The IP address or subnet of the client, an alias containing management hosts/networks, or (as a last resort only) Any
- Destination: WAN Address
- Destination port range:HTTPS (Or the custom port)
- Description: Allow remote management from anywhere (Dangerous!)

Some Links

@@ Line 25: / Line 25: @@
 A hard drive (or SSD) could come in rather handy...
-<span style="color: rgb(132, 63, 161);" >Coming Soon:&nbsp; Installing as a VM...</span>
+<span style="color: rgb(132, 63, 161);" >Coming soonTM... (PromiseTM...)</span>
+<span style="color: rgb(132, 63, 161);" >Installing as a VM...</span>
 = Install pfSense =