PFRE is a packet filter rule editor for OpenBSD/pf. PFRE is expected to be used by beginners and system administrators alike.

The UTMFW and PFFW projects use PFRE on their web administration interfaces. If you don't want to install PFRE yourself, you can download the installation files of UTMFW or PFFW to test drive PFRE easily.

Using PFRE, you can develop rules from scratch or modify existing ones:

• Load, save, upload, download, and delete rule files.
• Display the rules in a tabular form, classified to their rule types and parsed into their individual elements.
• Add and delete rules, and move them within the ruleset.
• Edit rules in almost all possible detail: PFRE supports most, if not all of the BNF syntax specification in pf.conf(5).
• Test rules: PFRE validates all input and tests rules using pfctl to provide detailed error reports on-the-fly, while editing individual rules or displaying whole rulesets.
• Install the rules as the main ruleset, and activate them by loading into pf.

A couple of notes about the requirements, design decisions, and implementation of PFRE:

• PFRE does not provide any wizards nor even try to simplify rule development by hiding details. On the contrary, it enables the user by providing as much relevant detail as possible.
• PFRE aims to generate text ruleset output as close to what a system administrator would produce as possible:
  • PFRE tries to be true to the original rule file loaded: PFRE does not insert any extra lines into its output, such as PFRE specific marks or rule generation dates (you cannot tell if its output is generated by PFRE or not).
  • You can insert blank lines between rules: Blank lines are of a separate rule type.
  • Comments are of a separate rule type too.
  • All other rule types support inline comments.
• The edit page provides help links to relevant sections on the pf.conf(5) man page, which opens in a separate tab on your browser.
• PFRE uses gettext to support different languages, currently English and Turkish only.
• All important messages and test results are reported in error and information boxes.
• PFRE writes detailed logs to syslog, which you can filter into separate log files.
• PFRE uses MVC design to separate business logic from presentation, e.g. the View does not know how to parse, generate, validate or test pf rules (it is as thin or dumb as possible).
• PFRE has been tested using PHPUnit and Codeception.
• Source code is documented using Doxygen.

PFRE takes security seriously:

• All input is untainted.
• Invalid rules are never tested using pfctl.
• Pfctl is executed in a separate process, which times out if pfctl takes too long.
• The Model is similar to the server of a privilege separation design. It defines and supports only a set of commands which can be executed by the View.
• As the sole gatekeeper for the Model, PFRE controller, ctlr.php is the only executable enabled in the doas configuration.
• The View executes all controller commands over an SSH connection.
• The login shells of admin and user users are set to sh.php. Also, they don't have a home folder. So the admin and user users can log in to the system and pass arguments to sh.php, but cannot drop to a command line shell.
• The login shell sh.php of admin and user users validates all commands and their arguments given to it, and then runs them using ctlr.php.
• No argument passed to sh.php or ctlr.php is ever expanded before being executed.
• Passwords are never visible plain text anywhere, not even in the doas logs.
• The View never reaches to the filesystem, nor runs any system executable (perhaps only /bin/sleep and /bin/date).
• All system executables are called using their full pathnames.
• The number of nested anchors in inline rules is restricted to a configurable maximum.
• JavaScript use is kept to a minimum.

You can find a couple of screenshots on the wiki.

Here are the basic steps to obtain a working PFRE installation:

• Install OpenBSD 7.6, perhaps on a VM.
• Install PHP 8.3.11, php-pcntl, and php-cgi.
• Copy the files in PFRE src folder to /var/www/htdocs/pfre/.
• Configure httpd.conf for PFRE.
• Create admin and user users, and set their passwords.
• Enable ctlr.php in doas for admin and user users, and make sure ctlr.php is executable.
• Point your web browser to the web server and log in.

The following sections provide the details.

The OpenBSD installation guide is at faq4.

Here are a couple of guidelines:

• You can download install74.iso available at OpenBSD mirrors.
• It may be easier to install a PFRE test system on a VM of your choice, e.g. VMware or VirtualBox, rather than bare hardware.
• 256MB RAM and 8GB HD should be enough.
• If you want to obtain a packet filtering firewall, make sure the VM has at least 2 ethernet interfaces:
  • The external interface may obtain its IP address over DHCP
  • The internal interface should have a static IP address
• You can simply accept the default disk layout and partitions suggested by the OpenBSD install script.
• You can safely leave out x*, comp*, and game* install sets; you won't need them for a PFRE test system.

Reboot the system after installation is complete and log in as root.

Create a package cache folder:

# cd /var/db/
# mkdir pkg_cache

Set the $PKG_PATH env variable to the cache folder you have just created:

# export PKG_PATH=/var/db/pkg_cache/

Download the required packages from an OpenBSD mirror and copy them to $PKG_PATH. The following is the list of files you should have under $PKG_PATH:

argon2-20190702p0.tgz
bzip2-1.0.8p0.tgz
capstone-5.0.tgz
femail-1.0p1.tgz
femail-chroot-1.0p3.tgz
gettext-runtime-0.22.5.tgz
libiconv-1.17.tgz
libsodium-1.0.20.tgz
libxml-2.13.3p0.tgz
oniguruma-6.9.9.tgz
pcre2-10.37p2.tgz
php-8.3.11p1.tgz
php-cgi-8.3.11p1.tgz
php-pcntl-8.3.11p1.tgz
xz-5.6.2.tgz

Install PHP, php-pcntl, and php-cgi by running the following commands, which should install their dependencies as well:

# pkg_add -v php
# pkg_add -v php-pcntl
# pkg_add -v php-cgi

If you want to see if all required packages are installed successfully, run the following command:

# pkg_info -a

Here is the expected output of that command:

argon2-20190702p0   C implementation of Argon2 - password hashing function
bzip2-1.0.8p0       block-sorting file compressor, unencumbered
capstone-5.0        multi-platform, multi-architecture disassembly framework
femail-1.0p1        simple SMTP client
femail-chroot-1.0p3 simple SMTP client for chrooted web servers
gettext-runtime-0.22.5 GNU gettext runtime libraries and programs
libiconv-1.17       character set conversion library
libsodium-1.0.20    library for network communications and cryptography
libxml-2.13.3p0     XML parsing library
oniguruma-6.9.9     regular expressions library
pcre2-10.37p2       perl-compatible regular expression library, version 2
php-8.3.11p1        server-side HTML-embedded scripting language
php-cgi-8.3.11p1    php CGI binary
php-pcntl-8.3.11p1  PCNTL extensions for php
xz-5.6.2            library and tools for XZ and LZMA compressed files

Create a 'pfre' folder under /var/www/htdocs/ and copy all the contents of the PFRE src folder to /var/www/htdocs/pfre/. Their user permissions should be root:daemon.

Make sure /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/ctlr.php is executable. If not, go to /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/ and make it executable:

# cd /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/
# chmod u+x ctlr.php

And create the folder for configuration files:

# mkdir /etc/pfre/

Configure PFRE in httpd.conf under /etc. Note that we should disable chroot by chrooting to /. Your configuration might look like the following:

chroot "/"
#prefork 3

server "pfre" {
	listen on * port 80
	listen on * tls port 443
	directory index "index.php"

	location "*.php" {
		fastcgi socket "/var/www/run/php-fpm.sock"
	}

	log syslog
	root "/var/www/htdocs/pfre/View/"
}

Create a self-signed server certificate. Run the following commands to generate your own CA:

# openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 2048
# openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -out ca.crt

Next, to generate a server key and request for signing, run the following:

# openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 2048
# openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

You should sign the certificate signing request (csr) with the self-created certificate authority (CA) that you made earlier:

# openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out server.crt

To make a server.key which doesn't cause httpd to prompt for a password:

# openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.key.insecure
# mv server.key server.key.secure
# mv server.key.insecure server.key

Finally, you should copy server.crt and server.key files to the default locations defined in httpd.conf(5):

# cp server.key /etc/ssl/private/
# cp server.crt /etc/ssl/

Run useradd(8) to create admin and user users (you can omit the -c, -d, and -s options, as we will set them with the chpass command next):

# useradd -c "PFRE admin" -d /var/empty -s /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/sh.php admin
# useradd -c "PFRE user" -d /var/empty -s /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/sh.php user

Then set their passswords to soner123 by running the following commands (actually, to the sha1 hash of soner123, because passwords are double encrypted on PFRE):

# /usr/bin/chpass -a "admin:$(/usr/bin/encrypt `/bin/echo -n soner123 | sha1 -`):$(id -u admin):$(id -g admin)::0:0:PFRE admin:/var/empty:/var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/sh.php"
# /usr/bin/chpass -a "user:$(/usr/bin/encrypt `/bin/echo -n soner123 | sha1 -`):$(id -u user):$(id -g user)::0:0:PFRE user:/var/empty:/var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/sh.php"

However, you are advised to pick a better password than soner123.

Go to /usr/local/bin/ and create a link to php executable:

# cd /usr/local/bin
# ln -s php-8.3 php

Edit the /etc/php-8.3.ini file to write error messages to syslog, otherwise they may disturb pfctl test reports:

error_log = syslog

Also, edit the /etc/php-fpm.conf file to write error messages to syslog:

error_log = syslog

To enable pcntl, go to /etc/php-8.3/ and create the pcntl.ini file:

# cd /etc/php-8.3/
# touch pcntl.ini

And add the following line to pcntl.ini:

extension=pcntl.so

Disable chroot in /etc/php-fpm.conf by commenting out the chroot line:

;chroot = /var/www

If you want to use the Turkish translations, you should first install the gettext-tools package to generate the gettext mo file:

# cd /var/www/htdocs/pfre/View/locale/tr_TR/LC_MESSAGES/
# msgfmt -o pfre.mo pfre.po

Go to /etc/ and create the doas.conf file:

# cd /etc/
# touch doas.conf

And add the following lines to it:

permit nopass www as root cmd /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/ctlr.php
permit nopass admin as root cmd /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/ctlr.php
permit nopass user as root cmd /var/www/htdocs/pfre/Controller/ctlr.php
permit nopass keepenv root as root

If you want the web server to be started automatically after a reboot, first copy the sample rc.local file to /etc/:

# cd /etc/
# cp examples/rc.local .

Then add the following lines to it:

if [ -x /usr/local/sbin/php-fpm-8.3 ]; then
	echo 'PHP CGI server'
	/usr/local/sbin/php-fpm-8.3
fi

Create the rc.conf.local file under /etc/

# cd /etc/
# touch rc.conf.local

And add the following line to it:

httpd_flags=

Also, if you want to use this PFRE test system as a firewall, you should enable packet forwarding between interfaces in /etc/sysctl.conf. So, copy the sample sysctl.conf file under /etc/examples/ to /etc/:

# cd /etc/
# cp examples/sysctl.conf .

And uncomment the line which enables forwarding of IPv4 packets:

net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

Now you can either reboot the system or start the php cgi server and the web server manually using the following commands:

# /usr/local/sbin/php-fpm-8.3
# /usr/sbin/httpd

Finally, if you point your web browser to the IP address of PFRE, you should see the login page. And you should be able to log in by entering admin:soner123 as user and password.