<![CDATA[Idea for New Package: PBNJ]]>I just started using pfSense on an internal firewall where I work, and it works pretty nice. Good work guys!

So I had an idea to extend pfSense with the capabilities of PBNJ (http://pbnj.sourceforge.net/). Basically, I think it would be a cool feature to be able to automatically scan your LAN machines with nmap and see changes over time and maybe even be alerted when a machine has a new port open. That way, an admin can jump on figuring out why this happened.

In an attempt to figure out the internals of pfSense and waste time, I have been fiddling with getting PBNJ installed on the pfSense box. Without the ports system, it requires the following steps:

  1. pkg_add -r perl
  2. pkg_add -r <various 6="" perl="" modules,="" around="">3) One of the dependencies, p5-Nmap-Parser is not in the packages, so it requires downloading the tarball, extracting, installing etc. This requires a pkg_add -r gmake
  3. extract PBNJ, perl Makefile.pl, gmake, gmake install, gmake test
  4. Maye more that I subsequently forgot.

Pretty involved, maybe installing ports and going from there would have been smarter. Anyways, I was wondering:

  • Do people on this forum think that this would be a useful thing to have in a pfSense box?
  • If so, is installing perl too much? i.e., would it be better to rewrite something similar in php?
  • Would anyone be interested in making a package / ui frontend for it with me?

I hope to hear your thoughts.</various>

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/topic/3254/idea-for-new-package-pbnjRSS for NodeTue, 21 Apr 2026 06:44:36 GMTSun, 28 Jan 2007 04:33:48 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Idea for New Package: PBNJ on Sun, 28 Jan 2007 04:39:24 GMT]]>@mrquintopolous:

I just started using pfSense on an internal firewall where I work, and it works pretty nice. Good work guys!

So I had an idea to extend pfSense with the capabilities of PBNJ (http://pbnj.sourceforge.net/). Basically, I think it would be a cool feature to be able to automatically scan your LAN machines with nmap and see changes over time and maybe even be alerted when a machine has a new port open. That way, an admin can jump on figuring out why this happened.

In an attempt to figure out the internals of pfSense and waste time, I have been fiddling with getting PBNJ installed on the pfSense box. Without the ports system, it requires the following steps:

  1. pkg_add -r perl
  2. pkg_add -r <various 6="" perl="" modules,="" around="">3) One of the dependencies, p5-Nmap-Parser is not in the packages, so it requires downloading the tarball, extracting, installing etc. This requires a pkg_add -r gmake
  3. extract PBNJ, perl Makefile.pl, gmake, gmake install, gmake test
  4. Maye more that I subsequently forgot.

Pretty involved, maybe installing ports and going from there would have been smarter. Anyways, I was wondering:

  • Do people on this forum think that this would be a useful thing to have in a pfSense box?
  • If so, is installing perl too much? i.e., would it be better to rewrite something similar in php?
  • Would anyone be interested in making a package / ui frontend for it with me?

I hope to hear your thoughts.</various>

Not as involved as you would think.  Check out the squid package which in turns install perl.  Theres a number of packages that install multiple dependencies and then setup the package.  I don't see anything that would change this situation for this package.

Check out http://pfsense.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/tools/pkg_config.xml?rev=1.407 and http://pfsense.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/tools/packages/

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/148165https://forum.netgate.com/post/148165Sun, 28 Jan 2007 04:39:24 GMT