Book Image

pfSense 2.x Cookbook - Second Edition

By : David Zientara
Book Image

pfSense 2.x Cookbook - Second Edition

By: David Zientara

Overview of this book

pfSense is an open source distribution of the FreeBSD-based firewall that provides a platform for ?exible 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. pfSense 2.x Cookbook – Second Edition starts by providing you with an understanding of how to complete the basic steps needed to render a pfSense firewall operational. It starts by showing you how to set up different forms of NAT entries and firewall rules and use aliases and scheduling in firewall rules. Moving on, you will learn how to implement a captive portal set up in different ways (no authentication, user manager authentication, and RADIUS authentication), as well as NTP and SNMP configuration. You will then learn how to set up a VPN tunnel with pfSense. The book then focuses on setting up traffic shaping with pfSense, using either the built-in traffic shaping wizard, custom ?oating rules, or Snort. Toward the end, you will set up multiple WAN interfaces, load balancing and failover groups, and a CARP failover group. You will also learn how to bridge interfaces, add static routing entries, and use dynamic routing protocols via third-party packages.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Updating pfSense


Odds are that, at some point, you are going to want to update pfSense, whther it's to take advantage of bug fixes, security patches, or new features. In this recipe, we will demonstrate how to update pfSense.

 

How to do it...

  1. Navigate to System | Update.
  2. Click on the Update Settings tab.
  3. In the Branch drop-down menu, select the correct branch (choices are Latest development snapshots and Latest stable version):

Note

You can select the branch from either the System Update or the Update Settings tab.

  1. If you want to disable the dashboard auto-check, uncheck the Dashboard check checkbox.
  2. Click on the Save button when you are done making changes.
  3. Click on the System Update tab.
  4. Take note of the current base system and the latest base system, as shown in the following screenshot, and then click on the Confirm button to update the system:
  1. The output will resemble the following, informing you of the updates being made to the system:
  1. When the update is complete, pfSense will reboot.

 

 

 

How it works...

An internet-connected pfSense system is capable of finding out when updates are available. Once we determine updates for our current branch are available, the process of updating pfSense is relatively easy.

There's more...

By default, the pfSense dashboard provides us with information about the latest updates. This is presented in the System Information widget, in a section called Version:

As it turns out, we can begin the installation from the dashboard. To do so, click on the update link on the dashboard (look for a cloud with a down arrow inside it). This will redirect you to System | Update.

See also