How to create a url alias?

mudfish · Jan 14, 2012, 3:58 AM

hello,

i cannot seem to create a url alias say http://www.facebook.com on the create url alias tab. i am always getting this error:

"The following input errors were detected: You must provide a valid URL. Could not fetch usable data."

i am using pfsense 2.0.1 version. ???

marcelloc · Jan 14, 2012, 5:23 AM

did you tried just www.facebook.com on your alias?

mudfish · Jan 14, 2012, 5:31 AM

@marcelloc:

did you tried just www.facebook.com on your alias?

i just did but the error now says:

"The following input errors were detected:

You must provide a valid URL."

The error "could not fetch usable data." is gone.

marcelloc · Jan 14, 2012, 5:42 AM

Are you trying url table alias? ???

You need a simple alias with www.facebook.com, not url table alias.

Include apps.facebook.com on this alias too.

mudfish · Jan 14, 2012, 6:01 AM

no. url alias only. entering http://www.anywebsite.com or just www.anywebsite.com results in that error. ???

mudfish · Jan 14, 2012, 6:11 AM

i found this thread

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=38720.0

and i'm wondering if url alias is fixed?? on the latest pfsense version. ???

marcelloc · Jan 14, 2012, 10:56 AM

There is no problem with that.

the alias type is host, not url. ;)

mudfish · Jan 15, 2012, 3:27 AM

@marcelloc:

There is no problem with that.

the alias type is host, not url. ;)

there is an alias type url. :)

marcelloc · Jan 15, 2012, 3:42 AM

The alias type url downloads alias list from a url

Sample:

Http://192.168.1.1/mylist.php

Mylist.php returns

Www.facebook.com
apps.facebook.com

mudfish · Jan 15, 2012, 9:34 AM

i will try alias by host type tomorrow as i am not on my server at the moment. i did not try that because as you can see from your screenshot that host entries by this type should be entered by their ip address not by its web address or fqdn name??? please correct me if i am wrong with that. thanks for the help :)

marcelloc · Jan 15, 2012, 10:10 AM

Use alias=host and ip=fqdn.

Cino · Jan 15, 2012, 4:18 PM

just food for thought… if you create a host or url alias(having it point to a list with domain names in it) doesn't pfsense just grab the first IP address it resolves and puts in in a table?

marcelloc · Jan 15, 2012, 5:46 PM

Yes, it will. Every apply or rules reload.

If dns changes you do not need to find old alias ip to replace.

But it will not work on sites from akamai.net for example.

jimp · Jan 16, 2012, 6:27 PM

It does take every IP that comes back though, so if you feed it www.facebook.com it only returns one IP, such as 69.171.228.14 - so that table would only have a single IP.

But if you give it something like www.google.com which returns 6 IPs at once, then all 6 would be in the table.

mudfish · Jan 17, 2012, 1:59 AM

alias by host type is really what i need and it works. thanks marcelloc :)