OPNexus

All your OPNsense firewalls. One console. Central management for multiple OPNsense firewalls: rules, aliases, NAT, VPN, certificates, logs and updates — rolled out through the OPNsense API with preview, confirmation and automatic rollback.

Website · Changelog · Handbook (German) · Deutsch

Status: 1.16.0 is the current stable release. It has been developed and tested against real OPNsense instances; a clean install from the release bundle, updates and rollbacks have been verified end to end. Please report rough edges.

What it does

• Fleet & high availability — live status of all hosts, CARP roles side by side, event history, alerts for split-brain or a missing MASTER, maintenance mode with an optional auto-revert timer.
• Rules, aliases & NAT — maintained centrally, rolled out to single hosts or device groups; port forward, 1:1 and outbound NAT with drift detection between cluster nodes.
• Safe changes — every change goes preview → deploy → confirm; without your confirmation inside the time window OPNexus rolls it back.
• Hierarchical policies — pre/post rulebases with inheritance across group trees.
• VPN — IPsec site-to-site, OpenVPN and WireGuard, defined once and rolled out.
• Network — interfaces, VLANs, virtual IPs, gateways, routes, LAGG/bridge/GRE, DNS and DHCP per firewall, plus tunables, cron, syslog, snapshots and diagnostics (ping, traceroute, port check, DNS), a comparison of cluster nodes, with a diff preview, a backup before every change and a guard against cutting your own connection; rules created by hand on a firewall can be adopted.
• Certificates — trust store for all firewalls and ACME / Let's Encrypt issuance.
• Logs & audit — central log search with correlation, dashboards and a complete deploy audit trail.
• Update center — firmware updates for the fleet, aware of HA order and maintenance mode.
• Setup assistant — a guided first run after installation: your own password, two-factor, and connecting the first firewall.
• Self-update — OPNexus can update itself from its web interface, with progress and automatic rollback (opt-in).
• Access — HTTPS with pinned firewall certificates, optional two-factor sign-in, roles (admin / read-only), keyboard operation, dark mode, German and English UI.

All screenshots show fictitious sample data.

Guides

• Manage OPNsense firewalls centrally – when central management pays off and how it works
• Manage OPNsense HA clusters with CARP – roles, alerts, ordered updates, comparing both nodes
• Roll out OPNsense rules safely – preview, confirmation window and automatic rollback
• The opnexus command-line tool – update, roll back and back up an installation

Quick start

Requires Docker with the Compose plugin.

git clone https://git.opnexus.dev/opnexus/opnexus.git
cd opnexus
cp .env.example .env        # set POSTGRES_PASSWORD (and ADMIN_PASSWORD)
docker compose up -d --build

The UI is then available at http://localhost:3100. Without ADMIN_PASSWORD a random admin password is generated on first start and printed once in the backend log. Lost it, or never saw it? This sets a new random one and prints it (use scripts/opnexus in a repo checkout, ./opnexus in the release bundle):

scripts/opnexus password

After the first sign-in a short setup assistant opens on its own: set your own password, optionally enable two-factor sign-in, connect your first firewall (including how to create the API key in OPNsense). You can skip it and reopen it any time under System › Setup.

For access from other machines and for production use with TLS (bundled Caddy proxy), see the handbook (German).

Prebuilt images (amd64) are published to this Gitea's registry. In .env:

OPNEXUS_IMAGE_REPO=git.opnexus.dev/opnexus
OPNEXUS_VERSION=1.16.0

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d --no-build

scripts/opnexus update / rollback then update the installation (pull first, database backup before migrations, automatic rollback if the services do not become healthy).

Updating from the web interface is available as an opt-in: set COMPOSE_PROFILES=updater in .env and an administrator can update (and roll back) under Settings › Update OPNexus. It runs as a separate small container that is the only one with Docker access — see the handbook (German) for the security model.

Privacy

OPNexus is self-hosted and has no telemetry. It only connects to your firewalls and to notification targets you configure yourself. The optional new-version notice (UPDATE_CHECK_URL=https://updates.opnexus.dev/latest.json) is off unless you set it; when on, it makes one plain GET at most every 12 hours with the user agent OPNexus/<version> — no instance or user data.

License

OPNexus is source-available under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0 — it is not open source in the OSI sense. You may download, read, modify and use it, including inside a company for its own firewalls. You may not use it to provide a product that competes with OPNexus (for example reselling it or offering it as a hosted service). The license text is authoritative.

Security

Please report vulnerabilities privately to [email protected], see SECURITY.md.

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OPNexus is an independent project and is not affiliated with Deciso B.V. or the OPNsense® project. OPNsense® is a trademark of Deciso B.V.