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    Does pFsense not do PTR records? Won't resolve IP to name on LAN

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved DHCP and DNS
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    • J
      jrey @lpfw
      last edited by

      @lpfw said in Does pFsense not do PTR records? Won't resolve IP to name on LAN:

      moved quad9 to second place

      or better as noted remove it completely

      where do your internal clients point to for DNS
      the pfSense or the internal server?

      L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • johnpozJ
        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @lpfw
        last edited by

        @lpfw said in Does pFsense not do PTR records? Won't resolve IP to name on LAN:

        Correct I moved quad9 to second place

        That is not going to solve the problem.. As I clearly stated - you have no idea which NS a client might ask at any give point..

        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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        • J
          jrey @johnpoz
          last edited by

          @johnpoz

          all yours

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          • L
            lpfw @jrey
            last edited by

            @jrey

            I think I have everything set to point to the internal Pihole (DHCP clients, IPSEC clients)

            I guess the crux of what was hoping for was in the FW rule logs window, have pfsense automatically resolve IPs to names, instead of me having to click on all the "i" for resolution.

            chatgpt seems to say pfsense will not support this.

            Thanks again for the second set of eyes !

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            • AndyRHA
              AndyRH
              last edited by

              Will pfSense resolve logged IPs to names? When looking at real time traffic, mine resolves the names just fine, but the logs have always had IPs.

              If I were being evil and I knew you logged names, not IPs, I would hijack an IP and do evil, then return to normal while you grill some innocent.

              o||||o
              7100-1u

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              • johnpozJ
                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @lpfw
                last edited by

                @lpfw said in Does pFsense not do PTR records? Won't resolve IP to name on LAN:

                have pfsense automatically resolve IPs to names, instead of me having to click on all the "i" for resolution.

                That would be a horrible horrible idea to be honest. You could have 1000's of nonsense IPs hitting your wan for example... attempting to do a PTR for every one of those IPs - many of which won't resolve anyway is just spending cycles and extra dns queries for zero reason to be honest.

                If that was an option - that would be pretty high on my list to make sure disabled..

                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                • L
                  lpfw @johnpoz
                  last edited by lpfw

                  @johnpoz

                  yeah def of course, but in some cases could be helpful

                  ie

                  in my case the scenario would be

                  tshooting an issue

                  only internal fw stuff (LAN<->IOT) is logging

                  would want to see names not IPs

                  johnpozJ J 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @lpfw
                    last edited by johnpoz

                    @lpfw said in Does pFsense not do PTR records? Won't resolve IP to name on LAN:

                    would want to see names not IPs

                    then click the little i - all instances of that IP in the log will now show up with its resolved name under it.

                    Your troubleshooting X can not talk to Y sort of thing - I would think before you could even start you would have the IPs involved.

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                    • J
                      jrey @lpfw
                      last edited by

                      @lpfw said in Does pFsense not do PTR records? Won't resolve IP to name on LAN:

                      crux of what was hoping for was in the FW rule logs window, have pfsense automatically resolve IPs to names,

                      Well now see that's a different issue, which has nothing really to do with pfSense's ability to resolve names if configured correctly -

                      you've turn this into a feature request to have the Firewall views (logs) just resolve the names auto-magically when you view those logs.

                      Were I building such a feature (and I'm not) you could base it on and only at the time the page is being loaded, under certain conditions - for example

                      on the Log Filter setting -Quantity

                      if the Quantity is 10000 - well you are just plain silly for trying to view it here anyway - move on

                      500 is records is questionable.

                      but if you select viewing for say 50 or even 100 records (say <= 100) resolving them in real time as the page loads is no worse in response time (page load) than someone trying to display say 1000 records without resolution.

                      That said, yeah generally not a good idea (on the pfSense box, not what it is made for), but with little effort if it important to you, you can syslog the records and report on them elsewhere if and as needed.

                      There are a ton of tools for doing this, any they will all show you names resolved on reports.

                      There are also some reports (views) within pfBlockerNG (for example) that will display the results with name already resolved.
                      Alerts View
                      There are sections, on this view each having their own count of records to be display and each with how many records to display

                      blocked, DNSBL, Permit, Match
                      200, 25, 200, 25 are my record counts in each of those sections.
                      takes no time at all to load this view containing 4 section all names resolved (if they actually have a PTR) .

                      this is the "Source" column from that

                      Screen Shot 2023-10-19 at 1.09.43 PM.png

                      Certainly doable, you have options.

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                      • J
                        jrey @lpfw
                        last edited by

                        @lpfw

                        it is open source after all

                        here is the "Firewall Logs" widget on the dashboard

                        Screen Shot 2023-10-19 at 2.42.59 PM.png

                        since it is only display 10 (my setting, because on my dashboard anything more than that makes want to scroll, and I don't like scrolling dashboards.)

                        --- wait oh my is that name resolution working -
                        FWIW, it is not any slower

                        I won't keep this because 2 lines of code added, and I don't need it, but as a POC there it is.

                        Screen Shot 2023-10-19 at 3.05.29 PM.png
                        as a side note, some people have crazy long name records. Already displaying in a smaller font, and I still have to wrap to fit the table provided by the widget.

                        So when there is a will there is a way. Enjoy the ride.

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