hass-pfsense

Join pfSense with home-assistant!

pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more.

hass-pfsense uses the built-in xmlrpc service of pfSense for all interactions. No special plugins or software needs to be installed to use the integration.

Initial development was done againt pfSense 2.5.2 and home-assistant 2021.10.

installation

Add the repo to your hacs installation or clone the directory manually. Once the integration is installed be sure to restart hass and refresh the UI in the browser.

configuration

Configuration is managed entirely from the UI using config_flow semantics. Simply go to Configuration -> Integrations -> Add Integration and search for pfSense in the search box.

pfSense

• System -> Advanced -> Max Processes - set it 5 or more.
• If using a non admin user account ensure the user has the System - HA node sync privilege. Note that this privilege effectively gives the user complete access to the system via the xmlrpc feature.

config

• URL - put the full URL to your pfSense UI (ie: https://192.168.1.1), supported format is <scheme>://<ip or host>[:<port>]
• Verify SSL Certificate - if the SSL certificate should be verified or not (if you get an SSL error try unchecking this)
• username - the username to use for authentication (ie: admin)
• password - the password to use for authentication
• Firewall Name - a custom name to be used for entity naming (default: use the pfSense hostname)

options

• Scan Interval (seconds) - scan interval to use for state polling (default: 30)
• Enable Device Tracker - turn on the device tracker integration using pfSense arp table (default: false)
• Device Tracker Scan Interval (seconds) - scan interval to use for arp updates (default: 60)
• Device Tracker Consider Home (seconds) - seconds to wait until marking a device as not home after not being seen. (default: 0)
  • 0 - disabled (if device is not present during any given scan interval it is considered away)
  • > 0 - generally should be a multiple of the configured scan interval

entities

Many entities are created by hass-pfsense for stats etc. Due to to volume of entities many are disabled by default. If something is missing be sure to review the disabled entities as what you're looking for is probably there.

binary_sensor

• carp status (enabled/disabled)
• system notices present (the bell icon in the upper right of the UI)
• firmware updates available

device_tracker

In order to use the device_tracker integration you must enable it in the integration options and select the specific devices you wish to track.

Tracking uses the pfSense arp table. Each poll interval the arp table is checked for the entry and if present the device is considered Home. Additionally after the arp table is checked the arp entry is force removed (if present) from pfSense by the integration. In short, your devices must communicate with pfSense at least once each poll interval to be considered Home.

Note that by default FreeBSD/pfSense use a max age of 20 minutes for arp entries (sysctl net.link.ether.inet.max_age). You may lower that using System -> Advanced -> System Tunables if desired.

sensor

• system details (name, version, temp, boottime, etc)
• pfstate details (used, max, etc)
• cpu details (average load, frequency, etc)
• mbuf details
• memory details
• filesystem usage
• interface details (status, stats, pps, kbs (time samples are based on the Scan Interval (seconds) config option))
• gateways details (status, delay, stddev, loss)
• carp interface status
• dhcp stats (total, online, and offline clients)
• OpenVPN server stats (per-server basis - connected client count, bytes sent/received, kB/s sent/received)

switch

All of the switches below are disabled by default.

• filter rules - enable/disable rules
• nat port forward rules - enable/disable rules
• nat outbound rules - enable/disable rules
• services - start/stop services (note that services must be enabled before they can be started)

services

service: pfsense.close_notice
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present
  # default is to clear all notices
  # id: <some id>

service: pfsense.file_notice
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present
  id: "hass"
  notice: "hello world"
  # category: "HASS"
  # url: ""
  # priority: 1
  # local_only: false

service: pfsense.system_halt
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present

service: pfsense.system_reboot
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present

service: pfsense.start_service
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present
  service_name: "dpinger"

service: pfsense.stop_service
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present
  service_name: "dpinger"

service: pfsense.restart_service
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present
  service_name: "dpinger"
  # only_if_running: false

service: pfsense.send_wol
data:
  entity_id: binary_sensor.pfsense_localdomain_pending_notices_present
  interface: lan
  mac: "B9:7B:A6:46:B3:8B"