Firewall

This guide documents the step-by-step process I followed to set up pfSense in a virtualized environment using Proxmox, configure a TP-Link router as an access point, and extend the network with another TP-Link router in range extender mode. This document is intended for future reference or anyone attempting a similar setup. 1. Initial Proxmox Setup Hardware Configuration: Host Machine: Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-14600 vPro® Processor (E-cores up to 3.90 GHz, P-cores up to 5.20 GHz) NICs: Intel i219 (single port) used for management. Intel i350-T4 quad-port NIC passed through to pfSense VM. Proxmox Installation: Installed Proxmox VE and ensured all updates were applied. Configured the management interface (i219) on vmbr0. IP: 172.16.0.5/24 Gateway: 172.16.0.1 2. pfSense VM Creation on Proxmox Download the installer Netgate Installer - AMD64 ISO IPMI/Virtual Machines Extract with 7-Zip since it’s a .gz file. Upload to Proxmox local (pve). Step 1: Creating the VM VM Configuration: Machine Type: q35 BIOS: SeaBIOS SCSI Controller: VirtIO SCSI Single Qemu Agent: Enabled Disks: 32GB, VirtIO Block, local-lvm, discard, backup, IO thread disabled. CPU: 2 cores, host type. Memory: 2048MB (2GB). Since pfSense recommends ZFS, assigning more RAM than required can have a negative impact on your overall memory usage. This can always be adjusted later as needed. Network: No network device added during creation due to NIC passthrough. Step 2: Network Preparation Enabled IOMMU: ...

In this blog post, I will walk you through the steps I took to set up my Debian 12 Desktop with a focus on security and essential configurations. I’ve also included resources that helped me along the way, and I’ll give credit to those who deserve it. Let’s get started! Credits Before we dive into the setup, I want to acknowledge the following resources that greatly contributed to my knowledge and inspired this guide: ...