Home network monitoring with pfSense, Protectli, and a screen scraper
Programming Snapshot – Protectli
What is making the lights on the router flicker so excitedly? An intruder? We investigate with pfSense on a Protectli micro appliance and a screen scraper to email the information.
It's a shame that no routers simply display the network packet addresses that pass through them on an LED display. Because I'm curious about what's going on in my home network, on the advice of a work colleague, I bought a micro appliance from the Chinese company Protectli (Figure 1) [1], which runs the FreeBSD-based open source firewall pfSense. The box is about four by four inches in size and passively cooled, so there is absolutely no fan or other noise.
Figure 1: The Protectli micro appliance used as a router.
The installation is a piece of cake – simply load the distribution from the pfSense Community Edition website [2] onto a bootable USB stick, insert an mSATA disk and RAM into the Protectli's small case, and after booting, say yes to the installation prompts. Badda-bing badda-boom, pfSense's web GUI is up and running (Figure 2).
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
There's a New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle is a Linux AI assistant that can work with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
-
FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.