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    What is my PFSense FQDN and How to Change it?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • S
      securedspace
      last edited by

      To be honest, I never heard the term FQDN before an hour ago, but I'm learning as I go. My goal is to accomplish setting up my PFsense box slowly over the next few months and learn the underlying networking concepts for each configuration as I go.

      Currently, I decided I didn't like that my Safari web browser makes me click through several warnings to access my PFSense box. Thus, I learned the basics of CAs and Certificates. I even found several incomplete guides on how to either create or self-sign a certificate and install it in my PFsense box, and I hit what must be the easiest question, because I can't find any documentation on it.

      What is the FQDN of my PFsense box and how do I change it?

      The closest my searching has found is that the FQDN is a combination of the Host name and Domain that I see on the System -> General Set up screen.

      However, that's the most I found. I assume it's a concatenation with a period, but when I try that into Safari, it doesn't work. It just searches Google for that. So I added Http:// before the hostname.domain and still not working.

      Also, while I'm changing it, what are best practices? I assume there's no benefit in obscuring it. Anyone attempting to hack me who is already on the network can use an arp -a command to find the PFsense box and access it via local IP.

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      • JKnottJ
        JKnott
        last edited by

        The FQDN is the combination of host name and domain name.  So, if both are properly set up, then you won't have the problem.  Also, make sure the host name is configured in your DNS server.

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        • S
          securedspace
          last edited by

          @JKnott:

          The FQDN is the combination of host name and domain name.  So, if both are properly set up, then you won't have the problem.  Also, make sure the host name is configured in your DNS server.

          How do I access it from my webbrowser via that combination?

          Do I concatenate them with a period and append http:// before it? The reason I need to know is that I read I shouldn't use the 192.168.x.x to access it, and instead I should use the FQDN, at least once I set up the certificate to avoid the annoying error message that requires 3 clicks to bypass on Safari.

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          • johnpozJ
            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
            last edited by

            @securedspace:

            How do I access it from my webbrowser via that combination?

            Just like you access any other FQDN on the planet… www.google.com is a FQDN... forum.pfsense.org is another, etc..

            As to accessing it via IP, you can do that if you want.. if you don't want the error then just trust the CA you created the cert with... I have been over this multiple times, there are multiple threads about doing this..  To use an IP vs the fqdn you would have to create the SAN on the cert you want to access..

            Only thing even slightly different from typical site on the internet would be if your using gui on different port than 443 you would have to put the port on the end of the fqdn via :port

            sslcertnamesandip.png
            sslcertnamesandip.png_thumb

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