Packages wishlist?

hoba

If I wanted to write a package for DG, where do I start? Is there a howto for that sort of thing for pfsense?

Search the forum and read up on http://wiki.pfsense.org

librarymark

Here is part of an email conversation between me and Dan Barron:
–-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello -

First - thanks for a wonderful piece of software!

I use DansGuardian at the public library I work at, and am having great success. I am
also experimenting with the pfsense firewall, and would really like to run some sort of
filter on pfsense. My choice would be DG, but the folks over at pfSense seem to be
scared of your license, and

I don't know why. It's GPL. All I say is if you want to download it from my site for
the purpose of commercial use then pay. Once you have it having paid for the download or
not then it's GPL. You can do what you like with it including redistribute.
–----------------------------------------------------
So I'll say it again: Where is the problem?

sullrich

Its either GPL or not. He needs to make up his mind. This is shady.

freebee

so, is about hamachi again. I see the past post about that, around 2005, and in the freebsd ports system have the port of that. So, the wish is for that package.

scholarlv

I would love to see some sort of Antivirus/Antispyware added to the packages.

tenortim

@sullrich:

Its either GPL or not. He needs to make up his mind. This is shady.

Actually, I just spent some time carefully reading http://dansguardian.org/?page=copyright2 and in fact that is not true. It is perfectly legitimate. Here is the deal:

He is the copyright owner. As such he can license his code any way he chooses to whom he chooses. He doesn't have to license or release the code at all. He is free to release it under multiple licenses as others have done e.g. he could also release under a commercial license which does not require the buyer to feedback changes.
He chooses to make the code available from his website under the GPL to a subset of users. He is the copyright holder. The GPL gives those recipients rights, and they can freely redistribute what they downloaded to their hearts content including giving away the source to commerical entities. The only restriction he is placing is on commercial entities downloading his copyrighted work from his website. In other words, choosing to make your copyrighted code available under the GPL does not place the restrictions on you that a recipient of code licensed under the GPL would be under. Because of the nature of the GPL, even if he chose to give out the code to just one person under the GPL, that person could go on and give it away to the whole world.

Near the top of the page I see

freely (no cost) downloadable from this site for general purpose unix distributions like FreeBSD, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc

so I believe you will find that pfsense is already covered as being allowed to download and use the software freely.

Hopefully that clarifies the situation.

Regards,

Tim

That's your interpretation of his license, but, unless you are a lawyer, a healthy amount of skepticsm needs to be used here. For the record, GPL'd is GPL'd, Dansguardian is not GPL'd if his license is a modification of the GPL. Unless an IP lawyer wants to sort through his license and decide its ok for pfSense to use, I'm sure the devs will stay away from it.

tenortim

@submicron:

That's your interpretation of his license, but, unless you are a lawyer, a healthy amount of skepticsm needs to be used here. For the record, GPL'd is GPL'd, Dansguardian is not GPL'd if his license is a modification of the GPL. Unless an IP lawyer wants to sort through his license and decide its ok for pfSense to use, I'm sure the devs will stay away from it.

The page in question says that he has been in conversation with RMS to OK this. So unless you are suggesting he is lying, then the originator of the GPL is OK with what he is doing. As regards the ability to e.g. dual-license, I can assure you that that is a lot more than my opinion. I have received training on this from IP lawyers (as part of a previous job). The copyright holder is entitled to license the software under as many licenses as they wish. He is choosing to release it under the GPL to a subset of people. That does not violate the GPL. The GPL tells you what rights and responsibilities you have as a licensee, not as a licensor. Nowhere in the GPL does it say that you must do as a licensor. Note near the top of the GPL (v2):

Each licensee is addressed as "you".

The rest of the license goes on to say "you may copy", "you may modify" etc.

There are any number of programs out there that are dual-licensed under the GPL and the BSD license. The BSD license conflicts with the GPL, but that doesn't prevent the copyright holder from legally doing this.

josempinto

Hello,

I think that It would be nice that we could install a minimum set of packages that could transform PFSense in a true and decent firewall, doing some cache (Squid ) at the same time we had some evidences that the things were working (Lightsquid).

I would like to be able to use (togeder) the falw. ones:

imspector +
Lightsquid +
PhpSysInfo +
Squid +
And squidGuard

But it does not work ALL together.

I think that this is nothing special…. (like Dashboard, LCDproc, Zabbix, Spand nor (even) Snort))

Anyway, even without this set of packages, PFSense is still a good firewall…, But culd be better!!!.....

Regards

librarymark

See - Honest to God, you guys have a thing against dansgardian.

freebee

will be very, very good if include smartmontools to monitoring temperature;

eri--

Since there are so many request for different things i want just to ask a simple question:

Will detailed docs on making a package bring more patches/packages developed by the requesters?
I might throw some time to making a detailed doc on how to create a package for pfSense if i see some interest from people.

Perry

@ermal:

Since there are so many request for different things i want just to ask a simple question:

Will detailed docs on making a package bring more patches/packages developed by the requesters?
I might throw some time to making a detailed doc on how to create a package for pfSense if i see some interest from people.

From my point of view as a very very bad programmer :-[. I'm sure you could give me some nice tips and the more documentation the better ( unless it's a iso document standard :P ).
One thing imo that could be misunderstood in creating a package is how small a part the actual creation of the package is. I don't recall many saying I've made this and this how do I transform it into a package.
What limits the packages i can do is general PHP, FreeBSD knowledge and how to grap things from pfSense.
By grapping i mean something like this:
[code=Shows configured nic's and custom names]require_once("guiconfig.inc");
include("head.inc");
?>

$i = 0;
$ifdescrs = array('wan' => 'WAN', 'lan' => 'LAN');
for ($j = 1; isset($config['interfaces']['opt' . $j]); $j++) {
$ifdescrs['opt' . $j] = $config['interfaces']['opt' . $j]['descr'];
}
foreach ($ifdescrs as $ifdescr => $ifname):
$ifinfo = get_interface_info($ifdescr);
$fgfg = convert_friendly_interface_to_real_interface_name($ifname);
echo "$ifname ($fgfg)
";
$i++;
endforeach;
?>

Maybe i should help out with a newbie / beginner guide. Where you could do some more advance stuff / fill out holes I've made.

eri--

Well first that code is wrong there now is get_configured_interface_list() or get_configured_interface_with_descr() as you can see we are pushing 1.3 to have APIs to facilitate most of things.
Form the interface list to the other infos.

Bascially you do not eneed any info about freebsd to create a package just know the application you are packagizing :). But i will try adding some docs for that.

Perry

Well first that code is wrong there now is get_configured_interface_list() or get_configured_interface_with_descr() as you can see we are pushing 1.3 to have APIs to facilitate most of things.
Form the interface list to the other infos.

Hehe Then it should be corrected in status_interfaces.php ;D

eri--

Where are you reading this?

Perry

ok my mistake, that was 1.2.1 not 1.3 as i thought.

stechnique

From a semi-outsider's viewpoint, I do think some developer doc and an up-to-date API would be a HUGE plus for the project.
I've been using pf for over 2 years on several projects, and although I don't have a lot of time on my hands, I happen to be an experienced PHP programmer, and I do think I could contribute to the project with some basic doc like that.
It would take me 2 weeks now to read through the source and figure out the structure you are using, the guidelines you follow, the functions that are available, etc. With some basic how-to and a reference API, I could be up and running in a few hours, and I'd have a quick reference API (which is a must for any project).
If you slow down on the coding and take some time to invest on documentation, you will see coding will pickup by itself afterward with more contributors and more efficient development.

Just my 0.02$.

vendetta

@ermal:

Since there are so many request for different things i want just to ask a simple question:

Will detailed docs on making a package bring more patches/packages developed by the requesters?
I might throw some time to making a detailed doc on how to create a package for pfSense if i see some interest from people.

Absolutely.

thekod

@vendetta:

@ermal:

Since there are so many request for different things i want just to ask a simple question:

Will detailed docs on making a package bring more patches/packages developed by the requesters?
I might throw some time to making a detailed doc on how to create a package for pfSense if i see some interest from people.

Absolutely.

Again, ditto. I've been screwing around with some of the inc's and xml's in the packages I've installed, which is cool and all, but the package system is slightly arcane, and I would be far more likely to actually create a package if there were some kind of package docs than currently…turns out, the current situation is likely enough since I'm going to create a package, but that's beside the point. :)