Offical package for packetfence

@jgjimenezs has been busy installing packetfence on NethServer. see PacketFence on NethServer
I think security is one of the major things that must be guaranteed with NethServer and IMO this is one of the best applications for Network Access Control.
So my request is to create an official packetfence package included in the admin webinterface.

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Could be used within NethServer, I am in testing within my firewall.

It looks interesting but I don’t have seen any request for this, can you describe a scenario that makes sense for you?
How can we use this tool? My concerning is about the size, packetfence looks designed for very big network and it’s not really the NethServer use case.

I think there absolutely is a use case for Packetfence within NethServer.
To identify the use case you should know what packetfence is. It is a Network Access Control tool. It can grant different users and devices to access information or services available on the network. Especially in environments with devices you do not manage yourself this is necessary to grant safe access for users and devices.

Deploying NethServer in educational environments is one of the options to get a huge extra market share in deployments. In such environments you will be confronted with a lot of unmanaged (BYOD) devices. To be able to keep both your network and those devices safe, a decent NAC appliance is necessary. Packetfence is one of the (very) few appliances that can provide this.

be aware that installing packetfence is not such a big deal. But really integrating it in an existing environment can be a challenge. Configuration is not that obvious and can be (probably will be) different for every instance. So besides installing, configuring needs a lot of planning and knowledge of the appliance. We could revert to packetfence documentation, I think it would be a good idea to have some basics covered in our own documentation. (if packetfence gets implemented ofc… :smile: )

I agree!
PacketFence is an additional tool to use in NethServer. but incorporate within the packages it. I do not think so.
I really liked everything he does PacketFense security and auditing.

Previously he was working on it, but my client left paused the project.

While we’re waiting for others thoughts what about trying to install it on NethServer starting from this?
http://packetfence.org/download/releases.html

Install packetfence at this time.

using official repo:

[PacketFence]
name=PacketFence Repository
baseurl=http://inverse.ca/downloads/PacketFence/RHEL$releasever/$basearch
gpgcheck=0

They will be installed at least 565 packages by placing the repo PacketFence

Ready!

I created a policy of full access in the firewall. only test mode

packetfence start settings: https://ip@firewall:1443/configurator

follow step by step.

and finish.

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Tests were clean installation of NethServer.

Some PERL packages are installed with the REPO of PacketFence and will conflict if they will have to install nethserver-directory

it would be advisable to use PacketFence outside NethServer.

Good, we should link this on our wiki. Would do you think @Jim?
@robb would you mind testing these notes?

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