IPFW IPFW Primer Document Draft

J

Jim B.

Hello All,

I have been working on an "IPFW Primer" document for a while.

The latest version of the IPFW Primer (2025-01-13T17:49-05:00) is at

https://www.jimby.name/techbits/recent/folder/ipfw-primer_en.pdf

This is essentially complete for the content I had in mind unless you can point to a glaring hole I missed that needs to be addressed.

BTW, I was able to get indexing working with the FDP Toolkit. Check out the new index at the end of the PDF. (The toolkit doesn't provide an index for the HTML version.)

I am considering this the "RC1" version, and would like your help with technical reviews.

If you can send me any comments and corrections via this thread or via email before the end of the January, that will be a big help.

My target date for turnover to the FDP is February 7th, 2025.

Best Regards,

Jim B.
jpb@jimby.name
 
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👏
The work done is impressive.
At first I thought that would be something quick to read, but it's not, it's 238 pages PDF.
Didn't read it entirely yet but so far explanations are clear and there are plenty of details.
IPFW gets a bit of the love finally.
One regret could be the use of Qemu instead of Bhyve but it's peanut at this point, really.
Good job mate and thank you.
 
gotnull said:
👏
The work done is impressive.
At first I thought that would be something quick to read, but it's not, it's 238 pages PDF.
Didn't read it entirely yet but so far explanations are clear and there are plenty of details.
IPFW gets a bit of the love finally.
One regret could be the use of Qemu instead of Bhyve but it's peanut at this point, really.
Good job mate and thank you.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your note. I realize Qemu may not be everyone's first choice, but it has always come through for me. One really nice feature is that, just like real hardware, it supports virtual consoles. When you click into the console window (and Qemu grabs the mouse), you can type Alt-2, Alt-3, etc. to access the other virtual consoles. Nifty.
 
Jim,

Thanks for creating this resource! I find it very useful and informative.
There are too few sources for ipfw(8) that would allow beginners to grasp the bigger picture.

You may want to fix the URL in your first post, since the location of the *.pdf has changes since your post. I found the your book at IPFW Primer via google search.
 
drxdev said:
Jim,

Thanks for creating this resource! I find it very useful and informative.
There are too few sources for ipfw(8) that would allow beginners to grasp the bigger picture.

You may want to fix the URL in your first post, since the location of the *.pdf has changes since your post. I found the your book at IPFW Primer via google search.
Click to expand...
Fixed. Thanks for your note!
 
blackbird9 said:
It would be interesting what you used to write it
Click to expand...
AsciiDoc, at least that's what Atril PDF viewer reports it as..

2026-06-06_21-05.png


Nevertheless it's a beautifully presented & formatted document, saved and on the reading pile..
 
Spica said:
AsciiDoc, at least that's what Atril PDF viewer reports it as..

View attachment 26410

Nevertheless it's a beautifully presented & formatted document, saved and on the reading pile..
Click to expand...

Yes, AsciiDoc. A couple of years ago, I was involved with the FreeBSD Doc Team. The Doc Team toolkit uses AsciiDoc and I just used that. I originally sent it up to phabricator where it languished for months. I then just used the toolkit to produce a PDF version and that is what you see on my website.

On a side note, I also included index terms throughout the text and used AsciiDoc to generate the index. I wrote that up too, but it also languished for months. Seemed like a trend so I stopped contributing.
 
Jim B. said:
I originally sent it up to phabricator where it languished for months.
Click to expand...
It's D48998, right? (I'm not good enough at reading adoc, so not enough sure...)

If so, it could be just overlooked because group reviewer docs alone is set as reviewers.
It would be better adding active members directly. For example, ziaee@ added indivitual NVIDIA driver ports team including me with group reviewer x11 on D55611 and some others.
 
Jim B. said:
I have been working on an "IPFW Primer" document for a while.
Click to expand...
Thank you for taking this up.

Observing from a mere end-user perpective.
As this document clearly is in a different category as the man pages or a chapter-like item in the Handbook, would it be useful of incorporating this document at some point in time in the ports tree? Is there precedence of incorporating a document-only port (that then can be easily installed as a package as well)?
 
Erichans said:
Thank you for taking this up.

Observing from a mere end-user perpective.
As this document clearly is in a different category as the man pages or a chapter-like item in the Handbook, would it be useful of incorporating this document at some point in time in the ports tree? Is there precedence of incorporating a document-only port (that then can be easily installed as a package as well)?
Click to expand...
Or Articles part of Documentation menu / page?
 
T-Aoki said:
It's D48998, right? (I'm not good enough at reading adoc, so not enough sure...)

If so, it could be just overlooked because group reviewer docs alone is set as reviewers.
It would be better adding active members directly. For example, ziaee@ added indivitual NVIDIA driver ports team including me with group reviewer x11 on D55611 and some others.
Click to expand...
I asked several people to review but no one stepped up, so I moved on.
 
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