pfSense

For building certain 3rd party software - For example the "virtualbox-ose" port. Or "cuse4bsd".

These programs (and others!) require their own loadable kernel modules to run. Which is not stuff in FreeBSD base kernel.

To build a kernel module for 3rd party software, requires dependancies in the "/usr/src" tree. Now we understand that psSense kernel modifications are closed-source now by ELF. However I think we only really needs to know what is the /usr/src FreeBSD revision number rXXXXX, for and given pfSense build.

So this problem occur because pfSense does override the "sysctl kern.version" string and omitting the rXXXXXX number of the base build. We can only see less accurate "10.0-STABLE" and so on. Which is a moving target with FreeBSD RELENG releases for security patches, etc.

If you (at ELC) can say the FreeBSD revision number eg. r286534, then we can build useful 3rd party software like VirtualBox for pfSense also. Meaning specifically, to include back "r286383" to the kernel version string. OR include the infos publicly elsewhere. Then that would fulfil this feature request. We think it do not change so much for them to need know the closed - source psSense specific kernel patches. So we not actually want / need to ask for any closed-source kernel infos held back by ELC. Only the FreeBSD revision number they are based upon. Many thanks for understanding.

If you cannot publish this fact, then OK but we cannot provide for pfSense such same way for such 3rd party software we can for other FreeBSD projects, FreeNAS and NAS4Free.

The building 3rd party software is not any extra responsibility anyone wish to place on pfSense team. And it is not a core feature of router / firewall to work. However what it does help is more environmentally-friendly type "single server" solution to be based upon pfSense. Rather than extra unnecessary boxes. Which makes better feature of pfSense to compete more strongly against other platforms.