pfSense Digest

According to this post FreeBSD is gearing up for the final RELENG_6 release (FreeBSD 6). So that means its time to get our act together and enter the beta cycle. So now is the time to test pfSense like you never have before. We need to get all the remaining bugs fixed.

Due to a serious installer issue, all current ISO releases have been pulled from the mirrors. We hope to have a new release out tomorrow at the latest.

In the meantime, visit the old fles area.

When changes and development occur as rapidly as they continue to on this project, it’s hard to keep up. The only feasible way I’ve found to keep up with things is through the three RSS feeds available.

If you’re not familiar with RSS, I recommend reading the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on RSS. There are a huge number of RSS aggregators available. Personally, I use Bloglines, a free web-based service. I use several machines in different locations, and it keeps track of what I’ve seen and what I haven’t, no matter what machine I’m using.

The available RSS feeds are as follows. You just need to copy and paste these links into your RSS aggregator software.

This blog
CVStrac timeline
Wiki changes

Update – There are three more feeds I just discovered in the FAQ.

FAQ News feed
FAQ Top 10 feed
FAQ Newest Questions feed

We are focusing on a number of last minute release issues. We’ll have updates posted again soon. Sorry for the delay!

Now that the feature freeze has been lifted, I will be making a push over the next few days to merge the new package code I’ve been working on into HEAD. The following features are among those currently planned for initial inclusion:

• Multiple package repositories
• Although the pfSense team will continue to run an ‘official’ repository, the package system will be moving to a more decentralized model. Any user may create their own repository XML file using the repomaker tool (check tools/repomaker in HEAD).
• Repository files will now contain a much greater amount of information about packages. In addition to the metadata provided by the current system, each XML file will include repository information, a list of available mirrors, and the BSD packages required by each pfSense package. This makes the installation process much simpler.
• Similar to the FreeBSD ports system or ipkg, a client will need to manually update their repository files to get new information, instead of sending an XMLRPC request to the repo. This makes it easier to run a repository and eliminates unnecessary interaction between the server and the client.
• Cleaner package XML files
• The package XML format has been cleaned up to be easier to read and maintain.
• All package information has been moved into the package file rather than the repository document. This makes it much easier to quickly change a repository or share package files.
• Speed improvements
• Information about the package system is cached whenever possible to avoid the overhead associated with walking the filesystem or parsing an XML document.
• Cleaner startup
• A single function called at boot handles the package system startup process.
• All packages now expose pfSense services when necessary. This list of services allows greater flexibility when determining which services to start and stop.
• Input validation
• All input gathered by package GUIs will now be automatically validated. Package authors may also pass $input_errors to their configuration functions to do more specialized input validation.

Are there any features you would like to see in the pfSense package system? Please leave a note or mail the list with questions/comments.

Important! We need users that previously had problems installing with the Installer to try this version!

New features include:

1. Polling support per interface. Supported interfaces: em, fxp, ixgb, nge, re, vge, dc, rl, sf, sis, ste, vr, xl. This should speed up networking quite a bit.
2. Port aliases are fixed
3. HTTPS Captive portal fix
4. Incoming FTP should be fixed (NAT Port forwads)
5. Fixed auth issues
6. USB Keyboard fixed
7. Installer allows overriding the disk geometry
8. Captive portal login count on status page
9. Package services stopped correctly upon deinstall

There seems to be a lot of confusion over just what the RELENG_1 tag in CVS means.

We’re taking a similar approach as the FreeBSD project in our CVS tagging. Commits now are all made to HEAD, which is developer-use-only now. After a certain period, these changes are MFC’ed into the tag RELENG_1. MFC is Merged From -CURRENT. HEAD in CVS is basically like FreeBSD’s -CURRENT, though generally we don’t refer to it as such. We use the same term, MFC, because that’s what we’re used to.

All public releases from this point on will be made from RELENG_1. This will eventually help us stabilize releases without slowing development, as known-unstable code and features will remain in HEAD.

This doesn’t mean much of anything at this point other than we’re getting closer to the first beta! FreeBSD 6.0 RC1 is out and is likely to be the only RC. 6.0 release is expected within a couple weeks or so. We should hit beta shortly after that, but no promises.

I just sent out this message to our developers list. This is great news!

Alright guys, a major milestone was just reached. RELENG_1. I have
branched the trunk of pfSense so the feature freeze is now lifted for
head!

I will be handling MFC’s to the RELENG_1 tree so if you have a commit
that needs MFC’d back to RELENG_1 (only bug fixes) then please label
in the commit something similar to freebsd. Something like:

MFC: ASAP
or
MFC: In 1 day
..
etc

I will merge stuff back to RELENG_1 on a daily basis as needed.

So without further due, go ahead and commit and lets get some new
features in HEAD!

Scott

We changed DNS servers last night. Other than stale caches affecting the resolving of our new FAQ FQDN, it was a transparent transition.

If you can’t resolve faq.pfsense.org/com/net, flush your DNS server’s cache. If you don’t control your DNS server, you’ll just have to wait until the cached entries expire.

The new NS records are park17.secureserver.net and park18.secureserver.net.

We currently have deployed all the mirrors we are going to use at this point. The load spread across the mirrors is relatively minimal for the connectivity available. Please hold off on any mirror offers for now.

After we reach 1.0 release, we may need to add some to deal with increased loads, but we’re in good shape for now.

Thanks to all those who have offered!