Third party Software on Pfsense
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SO, I was wondering.
Seeing that PF sense is a BSD (unix) based OS.
Would be it possible to get lil programs like say… and IRC server on it up and running?I used that example specifically because thats exactly what I want to do.
And maybe a file server? :o -
You "can" do it.
Altough it's not recommended and officially not supported. -
Yeah, I figured that would be the case - was just wondering if the distro would allow it.
So, has there been any talk on here of the like?
Can YOU do it? :p -
You can use pkg_add just like you could on FreeBSD, and the packages will probably work fine (provided you're not running embedded, anyway).
There are special considerations though. Startup is one (rc.conf is overwritten on boot, /usr/local/etc/rc.d works differently etc.), configuration could possibly be another depending on how the application configures itself, and I'm sure there are other issues you may need to deal with. Upgrades can often conflict with changes you need to make to get third-party packages working.
I have done it to install postfix as a mail filter (the stupid photocopiers at one of my clients' can't be configured to have a subject by default in scanned messages so lots of mail servers reject the mail as spam) and didn't have many issues other than getting automatic startup working, which took a bit of a hack.
It's doable, and probably not difficult for what you're proposing, but not really recommended. If you really need server capabilities and you only have one box, running two VMs makes more sense to me. Or a more general purpose distro that has better support for this.
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Yes, thats exactly what i'm considering.
The only thing I'm pondering, is how much latency PFsense has been reducing for me.
I know PC sense is made for the purpose of being a router, and so Im almost positive that it beats windows ICS where latency is concerned.
But would another linux distro also add more latency is passing on my packets? What do you think?If not, I could simple install Ubuntu (which I'm familiar with) without GUI, and run my irc server /file server from that
The question I should ask is; are their any test results that suggest that PFsense provides less latency when used to share an internet connection vs windows for example?
I'm concerned about latency because I game.Gratzi
