Unifi Controller on a FreeBSD laptop

August 15, 2023 — Nico Cartron

Why?

I have 2 Ubiquiti Unifi access points for my Wifi networks, and so far I was managing them from a controller running on a MacBook Pro.

Since I'm switching my personal laptop to a Lenovo running FreeBSD, I am slowly moving features to that device.

I have migrated the "basic" features such as email, browser, image manipulations, and even blogging.

One thing which I thought I could not migrate was the Unifi controller, but it turns out that's not true!

Installing it

I simply searched for unifi:

 # pkg search unifi
 unifi7-7.3.83_2                UniFi Controller v7

Then

 # pkg install unifi7

and a few minutes later, I had it installed.

I first looked in my XFCE menus and search for Unifi, but could not find it.
Then a quick look at the files in /usr/ports/net-mgmt/unifi7 showed the file files/unifi.in, which is a rc.d script:

 #!/bin/sh
 #
 # Created by: Mark Felder <feld@FreeBSD.org>

 # PROVIDE: unifi
 # REQUIRE: LOGIN
 # KEYWORD: shutdown

 #
 # Add the following line to /etc/rc.conf to enable `unifi':
 #
 # unifi_enable="YES"
 [...]

OK, so I checked in /usr/local/etc/rc.d and indeed there was a unifi file.

So I simply looked at its status with:

 # /usr/local/etc/rc.d/unifi onestatus

(I had to use onestatus since I hadn't added the relevant line in my /etc/rc.conf).

FreeBSD confirmed it was not running, so I launched it with

 # /usr/local/etc/rc.d/unifi onestart

Looking at the services listening, I confirmed that I had a bunch of new ones:

 # netstat -an |grep LISTEN
 tcp4       0      0 *.8843                 *.*                    LISTEN     
 tcp4       0      0 *.8443                 *.*                    LISTEN     
 tcp4       0      0 *.8880                 *.*                    LISTEN     
 tcp4       0      0 *.8080                 *.*                    LISTEN     
 [...]

I then added the below line in my /etc/rc.conf:

 # Unifi Controller
 unifi_enable="YES"

Using it

Trying to login and fixing the pf issue

When trying to open the URL https://127.0.0.1:8443, I got an error message from Firefox.

I then remembered that my laptop had the pf firewall installed and configured pretty aggressively, so I tested disabling it with:

 # pfctl -d

and this worked straight away.

I updated my /etc/pf.conf file to tell it to allow local connections:

 set skip on lo0

and reloaded pf with pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf, followed by a pfctl -e.

First login

I then opened the URL https://127.0.0.1:8443 in Firefox, and got a Unifi window asking me whether I wanted to create a new configuration, or import a backup.

Backing up my previous configuration

I fired up the Unifi controller running on my Macbook and downloaded a configuration backup (.unf file), noting that this was a version 6.x, when I was running version 7 on my FreeBSD.

Restoring it

I then used that file on the FreeBSD system, and the import process started.
At some point, I got a message telling me that the Unifi controller would restart, so I waited.

After a few minutes, I still had nothing, and when checking the status of the Unifi controller (with service unifi status), I confirmed that it was not running.
A service unifi start fixed it, and the import process carried on and finished.

I could then log into the Controller, where I could see the 2 access points, but no client yet - after a few minutes, the clients started to appear.

Using the Unifi Controller

The experience is the same as with any other controller, should you be running it on MacOS/Windows, or e.g. on a Linux server, so I won't give details.

Just a few screenshots to show it to you in action:

Wrap Up

I'm glad that it's possible to run Unifi controller on FreeBSD, that's one more steps towards "recycling" my old MacBook Pro!

Tags: FreeBSD, Misc

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