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unifi-pfsense

A pfSense package that provides the UniFi Controller software.

Purpose

The objective of this project is to develop and maintain a package that provides Ubiquiti's UniFi Controller software for the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall project.

Status

The project now provides two working scripts: an rc script to start and stop the UniFi controller, and an installation script to automatically download and install everything, including the rc script.

Milestones

  1. An installation script that is automatic, concise, consistent, and reliable.
  2. An rc script for starting and stopping the UniFi Controller.
  3. Custom package repository for development.
  4. pfSense user interface elements for managing the UniFi Controller.
  5. A complete pfSense-style package.

Once the package is stable, we have some other big ideas:

  • Detailed UniFi reporting in pfSense.
  • Graph data for RRDtool.
  • Dashboard widgets: AP status, connected users
  • Captive portal integration
  • Integrated "wireless" configuration
  • Backup and restore integration
  • Whatever else we can dig out of the API and mongodb

Challenges

  • Because the UniFi Controller software is proprietary, it cannot be built from source and cannot be included directly in a package. To work around this, we can download the UniFi controller software directly from Ubiquiti during the installation process.
  • Because Ubiquiti does not provide a standard way to fetch the software (not even a "latest" symlink), we cannot identify the appropriate version to download from Ubiquiti programmatically. It will be up to the package maintainer to keep the package up to date with the latest version of the software available from Ubiquiti.

Licensing

This project itself is licensed according to the two-clause BSD license.

The UniFi Controller software is licensed as-is with no warranty, according to the README included with the software.

Ubiquiti has indicated via email that acceptance of the EULA on the web site is not required before downloading the software.

Installation

To install the controller software and the rc script:

  1. Log in to the pfSense command line shell as root.
  2. Run this one-line command, which downloads the install script from Github and executes it with sh:
  fetch -o - http://git.io/j7Jy | sh -s

The install script will install dependencies, download the UniFi controller software, make some adjustments, and start the UniFi controller.

Starting and Stopping

To start and stop the controller, use the service command from the command line.

  • To start the controller:

      service unifi.sh start

    The UniFi controller takes a few minutes to start. The 'start' command exits immediately while the startup continues in the background.

  • To stop the controller:

      service unifi.sh stop

    The the stop command takes a while to execute, and then the shutdown continues for several minutes in the background. The rc script will wait until the command received and the shutdown is finished. The idea is to hold up system shutdown until the UniFi controller has a chance to exit cleanly.

References

These sources of information immediately come to mind: