pfSense

:facepalm:

how can I edit this ticket's title and information?
it was totally created by accident when I was preparing to send a feature request :\
relates to 2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT (2.5.0.a.20200907.0050)

TITLE: getting base system's rev. and OSVERSION into "System Information" dashboard
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the suggestion I have/had is to get base system's OSVERSION and revision into the "System Information" dashboard. main goal here to request this change is to provide an easier way so one can quickly check which version of FreeBSD (plus pfSense's patches) are applied on the running system.

• why?

- being part of any ISO 27001/27018 environment (or even a PCI-DSS one), few people or companies need to provide reports about what has to be changed, or what has changed in the software stack of its systems;
- helps out to jump directly to the page or source (repository's branch, and revision) which CHANGELOG entries and patch corrections;
- gives a better view if one is or is not affected by any CVE related to the base system and its components;
- as mentioned before, helps to get better report quality and transparency for auditory purposes should one needs to (by pin pointing versions of the firmware and its base OS);
- when talking about OSVERSION, we are also providing a way to track kernel's revision and a way to check/see what we do have behind the scenes [just like base's source and patches).

• but... you can use the console for that. why really bother getting it into the dashboard?

- by any policy, not everyone might have access to the CLI;
- if few have access to the CLI, not many people do trigger the correct commands to provide this information as fast as it could be provided (like, by the dashboard);
- rapid access to this information is indeed pretty handy and should be pretty harmless;
- again, makes SOP related work or auditory and reporting easier.
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this is what we have right now:

Version
    2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT (amd64)
    built on Mon Sep 07 01:02:59 EDT 2020
    FreeBSD 12.2-PRERELEASE

    The system is on the latest version.
    Version information updated at Mon Sep 7 9:41:42 UTC 2020   

this would be the information with the suggestions of adding OSVERSION and rev:

Version
    2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT (amd64) e8a228fe328(devel-12)
    built on Mon Sep 07 01:02:59 EDT 2020
    FreeBSD 12.2-PRERELEASE 1201523 1201523

    The system is on the latest version.
    Version information updated at Mon Sep 7 9:41:42 UTC 2020   

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should anyone asks: where did it came from?

• uname's output, provising userland and kernel invormation (-vmUK)

% uname -vmUK

• alternatively, via sysctl:

% sysctl kern.version kern.osreldate

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references, to check version/release information and notes from pfSense and FreeBSD?

- https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/versions-of-pfsense-and-freebsd.html
- https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/versions.html

Jim Pingle wrote:

I don't see a compelling case for adding this to the dashboard, for most it would be confusing/visual clutter. If you want to automate things, pull it via SNMP and not via scraping/checking the dashboard.

Also since we patch things independent of FreeBSD, the FreeBSD release doesn't necessarily mean as much as you imply. Especially now that we're using a FreeBSD-stable base and not a specific release/patch version.

hi Jim,
thanks for the feedback/reply on that one. appreciated!

sad it wasn't even considered that the feature could make it to the dashboard; I did believe it can be pretty useful and handy, instead of confusing (btw, I didn't even mentioned automation - that is indeed not made by checking the dashboard; we know that).

again, tyvm for the time and concern by replying to the ticket.