Book Image

pfSense 2 Cookbook

By : Matt Williamson, Matthew D Williamson
Book Image

pfSense 2 Cookbook

By: Matt Williamson, Matthew D Williamson

Overview of this book

pfSense is an open source distribution of FreeBSD-based firewall that provides a platform for flexible and powerful routing and firewalling. The versatility of pfSense presents us with a wide array of configuration options, which makes determining requirements a little more difficult and a lot more important, compared to other offerings. Through this book you will see that pfSense offers numerous alternatives to fit any environment's security needs. pfSense 2.0 Cookbook is the first and only book to explore all the features of pfSense, including those released in the latest 2.0 version. With the help of step-by-step instructions and detailed screenshots of the pfSense interface you will be able to configure every general and advanced feature from creating a firewall rule to configuring multi-WAN failover. Each recipe includes tips and offers advice on variations of the topic or references to other related recipes and additional information that can be found from other sources. pfSense 2.0 Cookbook covers the gamut of available features and functionality. The first three chapters will take you from a non-existent system to a basic pfSense firewall. The next chapter focuses on configuring any number of the VPN services available, a very important and sought-after feature for anyone implementing a firewall. The following two chapters describe how to configure the most advanced features available in pfSense; features that may only be relevant to the most experienced network admins. Chapter 7 is dedicated to understanding and configuring the "grab-bag" of features that are available in pfSense, but are often stand-alone options and unrelated to each other. The first appendix explains how to use the status monitoring tools available for many of the features. The second appendix wraps up with helping you to decide how and where pfSense may be incorporated into your system and what type of hardware is required based on your throughput needs.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
pfSense 2 Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Backing up the configuration file


Backing up configuration files is an essential part of any administrator's position. This recipe describes how to back up the pfSense configuration file.

Getting ready...

pfSense configuration files are stored in a plain-text XML format by default, but it also gives you an option to encrypt them.

How to do it...

  1. Browse to Diagnostics | Backup/restore.

  2. Select the Backup/Restore tab.

  3. Set the Backup area to ALL. For a list of all available areas, see the following Backup areas section.

  4. Leave Do not backup package information unchecked.

  5. Leave Do not backup RRD data checked.

  6. Click Download configuration.

  7. Save the file to a secure location.

How it works...

pfSense allows an administrator to download the entire pfSense configuration in a single XML file to any local or networked drive.

There's more...

Some passwords will be stored in plain text! If this is a concern, be sure to check the Encrypt this configuration file option and specify a password.

Backup areas

Currently in pfSense...