I’d like to raise two points for consideration and community feedback.
1. SARG Package – Consider Deprecation
After using the SARG package recently, I noticed that:
The web GUI is severely outdated, difficult to use, and not mobile-friendly.
The project is no longer actively maintained, making it a likely candidate for potential security vulnerabilities.
Its HTML output is sluggish and doesn’t integrate well with the modern IPFire web interface.
There are more modern and actively maintained alternatives, such as Lightsquid, which offer a much better user experience and similar reporting functionality.
Given this, I wonder if it might be time to consider deprecating or replacing SARG within IPFire — or at least labeling it as legacy/unsupported so users are aware of the risks.
2. dnsdist – Configuration Errors on Install
I tried installing dnsdist yesterday through IPFire’s package system (Later through CLI). The web GUI showed an error post-install, but the installation was completed. Then, when trying to start the service manually, I received the following:
dnsdist configuration file contains errors
I’m not sure what’s wrong with the configuration — I haven’t made any manual edits yet. Could anyone clarify:
Why does this error appear immediately after install?
Is there a default config that should be present?
How can I correct or generate a valid configuration file so I can get dnsdist running?
Thanks for all the great work on IPFire, looking forward to the feedback.
dnsdist has no configuration installed by default. You need to create your own one. A default config is not possible as it would depend on the individual user requirements for the package.
As the documentation for dnsdist indicates
dnsdist is an addon for experienced admins. It needs a special config for your network & needs.
The dnsdist documentation should help you with the info you will need to create your config based on your requirements.
Thanks a lot for the info about SARG and dnsdist. I’m testing all available monitoring tools in IPFire that are accessible through a web UI. I’ve explored Zabbix, Monit, and SARG, but right now I’m especially interested in dnsdist. I just installed it and wanted to get it running, but it needs to be configured first.
SARG is a good concept, and since I’m comfortable with web UIs, I’ll try to find time for it after I’ve explored IPFire and the add-ons further.
dnsdist is not a monitoring tool. From the documentation.
It is a highly DNS-, DoS- and abuse-aware loadbalancer. Its goal is to route traffic to the best server, delivering top performance to legitimate users while shunting or blocking abusive traffic.
As I mentioned, somehow at 2:00 A.M. I thought it was a monitoring tool, so I just installed it and kinda went “boh, do it”—was expecting it to start monitoring . I actually had to go to bed right after that.
By the way, I changed the look of SARG, and with that, the improvement ideas really started flowing!
. I actually had to go to bed right after that.
