pfSense Digest

We’re aiming for the first 2.0 release candidate soon. We need your help to reach that milestone. The vast majority of the open tickets are in state feedback, meaning they need testing and commonly feedback from the initiator of the ticket (or someone else who can test that specific scenario). If you have opened any tickets currently marked as feedback, please follow up there. If you’re in a position to help test any of those, or contribute fixes for the few that are still open, we’d appreciate the help.  Thanks!

1.2.3-RC1 has been out for nearing a couple months now, and while there aren’t any issues with it that 1.2.2 and earlier versions don’t have, we’re holding out on release because of some issues outside our code base that we hope to get resolved in the underlying software (FreeBSD and ipsec-tools). These affect both 1.2.x and 2.0. Most should be resolved now, though we’re still working on a DPD issue with ipsec-tools.

June 29 Update: We’re still working on one last FreeBSD issue – kern/127528. We will not be releasing RC2 until we have a resolution for this problem.

The pfSense team will come together again this year for a week of development in the 2nd week of March in Louisville. The time will be mainly spent on working on pfSense 2.0. You should expect some huge progress on various features and the overall status of this major release. It looks like this year even more developers will make it to this convention (besides the usual suspects that have always been around).

If you want to show your support to the project now is the time to do so by sending a donation to fund the expenses of this years hackathon (mainly food and drinks or even travel expenses if enough money comes together). For details on how to donate check out this site. You can chip in via PayPal here, or for those with larger budgets, consider our commercial support services. 

We also want to thank all the past donors that helped fund this event the last three years. It’s always been a great success, and we look forward to another week of significant progress for the project. 

Thank you!

As 2008 comes to a close, we have many plans for 2009. This post outlines some of the big things coming up in 2009.

• CVS conversion to git – this has been partially in progress for 6 months now, and now that 1.2.1 is out, Bill Marquette is working on getting us converted. This should be done within the next week, and brings a number of development-related benefits which will be detailed later.
• pfSense as an appliance building framework – one of the things Scott and I envisioned in founding this project is to make it into an appliance building framework, in combination with the package system. With 2.0, this has come to fruition. The firewall project will remain as it is today, but we have also set things up in a way that allows us to build appliances such as pfDNS, pfPBX, and more to come. This also makes it easier to build the rebranded versions of pfSense that several companies sell. If your company is interested in selling a rebranded version, we encourage you to check out our reseller subscription.
• Release of pfSense: The Definitive Guide book – this has been a work in progress for more than a year, and should be in print and available for purchase in the first quarter of 2009.
• Conferences – pfSense will be presented at multiple conferences this year. DCBSDCon in February is confirmed, and we will likely also be at BSDCan and NYCBSDCon in 2009.
• Developer summit/hackathon – we’ll be having our fourth annual developer conference in March. This is a full week get together, with 6-8 developers expected to attend from across the US and Europe.
• 1.2.x maintenance releases – We will put out maintenance releases with bug and security fixes as needed, probably into 2010. None will see as significant of changes as 1.2 to 1.2.1, with the switch from FreeBSD 6.2 to 7.0, to avoid the lengthy release engineering process that significant change necessitated.
• 2.0 release – we hope to see the 2.0 final release late in 2009, or at a minimum, be at release candidate status by this time next year. There is a significant amount up in the air with this release, and a lot of work remaining to be completed, so this is a very rough estimate. After getting converted to git, we will be moving 2.0 from its current FreeBSD 7.1 base to what will become FreeBSD 8.0. We expect the 2.0 final release will be on FreeBSD 8.0, though that depends on FreeBSD’s release schedule which is entirely outside our control.

2008 was the most successful year to date for this project, and we look forward to making 2009 top that. Thanks to all of you who support the project, especially our commercial support and reseller subscribers!

Here’s to a great 2009. Happy New Year!

There are a couple remaining known issues with 1.2.1. 

Wireless – there were some issues here, we think they should all be fine after a couple commits this weekend. This isn’t fully verified yet though, if you were having any trouble with wireless in 1.2.1 please try an updated snapshot and report your findings in the forum. 

VLANs – This one is difficult to quantify because it works fine in many circumstances, and fails in others. This will get some more attention over the next week. 

You can always find the most up to date status of known 1.2.1 issues on the developer wiki. 

Once we’re confident the wireless issues are indeed resolved and find and fix the cause of the VLAN problems some users are experiencing, we’ll be releasing the first official release candidate. The release candidate phase should be short, we expect a final release not long after the first RC assuming no additional significant issues are discovered.

Edit: 1.3 was renamed to 2.0

For the latest info, see the 2.0 beta post.

1.3 ALPHA snapshots are now available for testing! These bring significant changes from 1.2, and are vastly different from the 1.2.1 snapshots that are also now available. The 1.2.1 snapshots are only bug fixes to 1.2 release. These 1.3 snapshots bring you all the great new features that have been added to pfSense over the past 8 months. The 1.3 new features tag on this blog will show you some past posts discussing a number of the great additions in this release.

Upgrading to 2.0 Snapshots
Upgrading from 1.2 to 2.0 has not been tested much. Be prepared to reinstall if you do try it.

Snapshot File Naming Convention
The file naming convention for snapshot releases has changed. They now include the date and time of the snapshot build. This is in YYYYmmdd format, and is in the local time of the build servers (Louisville, US Eastern). This makes the snapshots sort properly by date, and makes it easier for those of us who keep lots of snapshots to retain them with unique names. It also means we will never interrupt anyone’s download by overwriting with a new snapshot. Several builds will be retained in these folders for 1-2 days – make sure you get the newest build available.

New Forum Board for 2.0 Snapshots
Please keep all forum 2.0 discussion in the 2.0 Snapshot Feedback and Problems board. If you try these snapshots, we would appreciate feedback on your experiences.

Download Link
Yes, I have fully read and understand the above and wish to continue to download 2.0 ALPHA snapshots

Questions
General questions can be posed here as a comment, or on the forum. If you have a specific problem to report, please do not leave it as a comment, rather use the forum. This allows us to work with you on issues without creating a mess in the comments here.

Enjoy!

pfSense 1.2.1 snapshots are now available for testing! These snapshots contain a few bug fixes since 1.2 release, and the base OS has changed to FreeBSD 7.0.

WARNING
These snapshots are not widely tested at this point. The change to FreeBSD 7.0, and some changes in the build system related to our git conversion may have created some OS issues. The pfSense code itself has not changed much from 1.2-release, and what has changed is all pretty well tested, so there likely won’t be any issues there. The OS changes mean you should be very careful if you choose to test these snapshots. Backup your configuration first, and make sure you have a pfSense 1.2 CD handy for reinstall in the worst case scenario. We are not aware of any problems, but again, this has not been widely tested yet so proceed with caution! I strongly suggest not trying this on any critical systems yet.

Base OS Changed to FreeBSD 7.0…for now

Our previous plan was to release 1.2.1 on a FreeBSD 6.3 base, but we want to keep our latest stable release on FreeBSD’s latest stable release, to ensure the best hardware support and performance. So our first public 1.2.1 snapshots are based on FreeBSD 7.0. This is subject to change back to 6.3 if significant issues are found that would delay this release. We’re hopeful this will be even better than 6.x, but time will tell.

Upgrading to 1.2.1 Snapshots
You should be able to successfully upgrade a 1.2 full install using a pfSense-Full-Update file from either the Firmware page or console upgrade. This has been tested a handful of times with no problems, but again – not widely tested. Embedded upgrades might be possible from the console, but have not been tested at all. If you would like to try, let us know how it goes. Make sure you backup your config, and be prepared to reflash.

Snapshot File Naming Convention
The file naming convention for snapshot releases has changed. They now include the date and time of the snapshot build. This is in YYYYmmdd format, and is in the local time of the build servers (Louisville, US Eastern). This makes the snapshots sort properly by date, and makes it easier for those of us who keep lots of snapshots to retain them with unique names. It also means we will never interrupt anyone’s download by overwriting with a new snapshot. Several builds will be retained in these folders for 1-2 days – make sure you get the newest build available.

New Forum Board for 1.2.1 Snapshots
Please keep all forum 1.2.1 discussion in the 1.2.1 Snapshot Feedback and Problems board. If you post to the mailing list, make sure you mention you are using 1.2.1 snapshots. If you try these snapshots, we would appreciate feedback on your experiences.

Download Link
Yes, I have fully read and understand the above and wish to continue to download 1.2.1 snapshots

Questions
General questions can be posed here as a comment, or on the forum. If you have a specific problem to report, please do not leave it as a comment, rather use the forum or mailing list. This allows us to work with you on issues without creating a mess in the comments here.

Enjoy!

Development work continues on 1.2.1 and 1.3.

1.2.1

We’re having some build server difficulty, or would have made snapshots available almost a month ago. We hope to have that resolved this week and get 1.2.1 snapshots available so the community can help us test the changes.

1.3

We have 1.3 snapshots building but have not had time to put together the required information to make them widely available. We’re also hesitant to provide snapshots of branches that are seeing frequent development and have a number of areas in the midst of significant changes. But once we can write up some caveats, basic guidance, and things to look out for, we will make the snapshots publicly available.

Revision Control Conversion

Bill Marquette has been working on converting our revision control from CVS to git, and replacing cvsweb and cvstrac. These will be much improved across the board once this conversion is complete. Our current systems are less than ideal for a number of reasons. More information on this will come once we get fully converted (ETA unknown).

Most of the development time since the 1.2 release has been spent on the new features in 1.3, however an updated 1.2 release is also in the works.

Version 1.2.1 will be released this summer. It will use FreeBSD 6.3 as the base system, and incorporate fixes for a few issues discovered since the 1.2 release. No new features will ever be added to 1.2.x releases.

Version 1.3 is not yet publicly available. With BSDCan coming very soon, that has been more of a focus than testing and preparing the initial public 1.3 release. It may not be available until after BSDCan.