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pfSense Installation

Antoine de Barbarin

Click on create VM button on the top right of the screen

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Fill the form with the name of the VM pfSense-infraSI and click Next

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Select the pfSense .iso image and click Next

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Click Next

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Select the disk in which install it and the size of the partition 32GiB and click Next

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Select the number of CPUs to allocate: 1 CPU with 2 cores and click Next

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Select the RAM to allocate: 2048MB and click Next

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Select the first network interface: vmbr0 (WAN interface) and click Next

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Confirm the creation of the pfSense VM

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Click on the newly created VM and then click on the tab Hardware

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Click on Add and then on Network Device and select the Bridge vmbr4 dedicated to the DMZ network then click on the Add button

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Repeat the process with the Bridge vmbr5 dedicated to the LAN network with the VLANs

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Here is the result

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Click on image-20250530153132435 and then on image-20250530153132435

Then the VM will boot and the installer will start. Accept the license and rights

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Press on Enter to begin the installation

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Accept the default partitioning option Auto (ZFS)

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Press Enter to begin the installation

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Press Enter to accept the default Stripe mode

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Press Space to select the disk and then Enter to go on

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Select Yes and press Enter

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Then, the installation will begin

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When finished, accept to reboot the VM

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While rebooting, you can remove the .iso image editing the CD/DVD Drive in the Hardware section

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When the VM has rebooted, some basic configuration will be done in the command line interface.

For the VLANs, type n for the moment (they will be created in the web interface)

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Type vtnet0 for the WAN interface, vtnet1 for the LAN and vtnet2 for the OPT1

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Confirm the network interface configuration

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Now the installation is complete. The rest of the configuration will be done on the web interface.

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Open the browser and go to pfSense's web interface. Accept the warning to continue.

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Then log in the web configurator with the default credentials (admin - pfsense)

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The first thing to do when signing in the web configurator is to follow a setup wizard. Click on Next

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Type pfsense in lowercase for the hostname and infrasi.lan for the domain name, then click on Next

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Select the timezone Europe/Paris for the NTP configuration

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Keep the WAN interface set on DHCP and uncheck the Block RFC1918 Private Networks and Block bogon networks rules and click on Next

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For the LAN interface, type the static IP address 172.16.0.1 and the subnet mask 29 to allow 6 hosts for the moment. It will be easily upscaled afterwards. Then click on Next

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Type a new password and confirm it. Click on Next

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Click on Reload to accept and apply the new configurations.

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Click on Finish

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Accept the license and right.

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Go to System > Advanced and change the web configurator port to 12345 to free the HTTPS port.

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If you want, you can go to System > General Setup to change the CSS theme of the web configurator

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Go to VPN > OpenVPN in the Wizard tab and click Next

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Fill the form with the following values and click on Add new CA

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Then click on Add new Certificate

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Fill the form with the following values and click on Create new Certificate

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Fill the form with the following values and click on Next

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Check the two rules to allow access from wherever to pass through the VPN tunnel and click on Next

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Click on Finish to save and apply the OpenVPN Server

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Go to System > User Manager and click on Add

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Fill the form with the following values and click on Save

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Go to System > Package Manager > Available Packages and search for openvpn, then on the package named openvpn-client-export click on Install and Confirm

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Wait for the installation to finish

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Go to VPN > OpenVPN > Client Export and at the bottom of the page, you can download the exact configuration to connect to the Admin-VPN.

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After downloading the configuration (I chose Inline Configuration > Most Clients), you can access it.

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Now that the connection exists, we can easily use it with the command nmcli

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Now we can access the web configurator using the VPN, and we can see our current connection with the OpenVPN widget in the dashboard

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Go to Interfaces > Assignments > VLANs and click on Add

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Choose the vtnet2 interface (OPT1) and set the VLAN at 10 describing it as Internal Services and click on Save

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Then do the same for the Clients VLAN, with value 20 on the same network interface

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Go back to Interfaces > Assignments and set OPT1 as VLAN10 and add a new OPT2 as VLAN20 and click on Save

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Then go to Interfaces > LAN, Interfaces > OPT1 and Interfaces > OPT2 to change their names with DMZ, Services and Clients, check the option Enable interface if it's not checked already and assign a Static IP address if it's not set up already.

Interface IP address
DMZ 172.16.0.1 / 29
Services (VLAN 10) 172.17.0.1 / 28
Clients (VLAN 20) 172.18.0.1 / 27

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Go to System > Advanced > Networking to enable KEA DHCP instead of the deprecated ISC DHCP

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Go to Services > DHCP Server to configure the DHCP Server on each interface as following

Interface Starting IP Ending IP
DMZ 172.16.0.6 172.16.0.6
Services 172.17.0.14 172.17.0.14
Clients 172.18.0.2 172.18.0.30

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Create aliases

Go to Firewall > Aliases and click on New, then fill the forms with the values below and click on Save

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Repeat the process for the following aliases

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