so why no detailed doc on firewall/nat settings?

[nrf]

As a reference manual, the online document doesn't really satisfy my appetite for understanding and mastering the firewall and its NAT settings. there are even no main sections on this, nor how-to topics. I am trying to understand how it is blocking my work vpn client from getting thru even though port 500 appears to be open, but  I am really asking this question in a more general vein. It seems a great manual would have full reference for every point on the menu tree as all the little 'info' buttons don't qualify as reference material in my mind.

Maybe we are just supposed to know this stuff or refer to documents for the underlying open source components, in which case what would that be for the firewall/nat part?

[ChrisH]

I wondered about that as well when I started using OPNsense. Luckily I had used m0n0wall and pfSense before and the base concepts have stayed the same.

You can always have a look at the pfSense documentation
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Category:Firewall_Rules
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Category:NAT
as a starting point.

But I agree, OPNsense needs their own documentation on what is after all the core functionality of the product.

[franco]

The most pressing work was documenting the new features we added and things that had the most complexity like shaping, VPN and multi-wan. We do agree the time has come to work on ground concepts for the docs. And we need to be clever about distributing the time that we have to work on this as well.

I hear a change might be that the docs source repository will be opened up with 18.1, so anybody will be able to help as well in maintaining a thorough and up-to-date documentation.


Cheers,
Franco

[ChrisH]

I think opening up the documentation so you don't have to do all the work is the way to go.
I would be willing to contribute.