Cloudflare Zero Trust tunnel client does not support FreeBSD out of the box, and Cloudflare does not provide FreeBSD binaries either. This means that we need to either fetch the package or build the binary ourselves, and then configure tunnel in a roundabout way: automatic tunnel setup does not work. Lastly, we want to enable it in a way to survive the TrueNAS OS upgrades, let alone reboots.

Obtaining the cloudflared binary

Building from source

  1. Create a temporary jail named temp, enable DHCP, BPF, and VNET, and login: 
    root@truenas[~]# iocage create -r 13.1-RELEASE -n temp
temp successfully created!
root@truenas[~]# iocage set dhcp=1 temp
dhcp: 0 -> 1
root@truenas[~]# iocage set bpf=1 temp
bpf: 0 -> 1
root@truenas[~]# iocage set vnet=1 temp
vnet: 0 -> 1
root@truenas[~]# iocage console -f temp
...
root@temp:~#
  2. Now we are inside the jail. Fetch and extract ports: 
    portsnap fetch
portsnap extract
  3. Build cloudflared: 
    cd /usr/ports/net/cloudflared/
env FORCE_PKG_REGISTER=1 make install clean

  4. You will be presented with a series of configuration dialogs, accept everything by default, except do disable dtrace (for some reason it does not build, and we’re not going to be debugging the cloudflared anyway):

    Screenshot

Or, installing the package

  1. Adjust the update channel in /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf if desired
  2. Install the package 
    pkg update
pkg upgrade -y
pkg install -y cloudflared

Moving the files in place

  1. Now you shall have /usr/local/bin/cloudflared daemon and /usr/local/etc/rc.d/cloudflared rc script. Copy them to some persistent location, for example, a dedicated dataset on your main pool, e.g. /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/.... We will symlink them into the correct positions later.
  2. At this point, we no longer need the temp jail. Log out, stop, and destroy it: 
    root@temp:/usr/ports/net/cloudflared# exit
logout
root@truenas[~]# iocage stop temp
...
root@truenas[~]# iocage destroy temp
...

Creating the tunnel

cloudflared service install ... does not work, so we will create a tunnel manually, and then migrate it to manage from the ZeroTrust dashboard.

  1. On the main TrueNAS instance symlink the executable and the rc.d script to the expected locations: 
    ln -s /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/usr/local/bin/cloudflared /usr/local/bin/cloudflared
ln -s /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/usr/local/etc/rc.d/cloudflared /usr/local/etc/rc.d/cloudflared
  2. Also create a folder to hold cloudflare configuration data, and symlink it to the main host as well: 
    mkdir -p /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/usr/local/etc/cloudflared
ln -s /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/usr/local/etc/cloudflared /usr/local/etc/cloudflared
  3. Now login to cloudflare and follow the instructions: 
    cloudflared tunnel login
  4. As a result, the cert.pem file will be created, move it to the configuration folder: 
    mv /root/.cloudflared/cert.pem  /usr/local/etc/cloudflared
  5. Proceed with the tunnel creation per Cloudflare documentation1.
  6. Disable the TLS verification in the advanced properties of the tunnel if your TrueNAS instance uses self-signed certificate

Configuring persistence

  1. Create the init.sh file in your cloudflared dataset on the persistent pool with the commands necessary to configure the symlinks, cloudflared daemon and to start it.

    #!/bin/sh
service cloudflared stop
   
echo "Linking /usr/local/etc/cloudflared/"
ln -sF /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/usr/local/etc/cloudflared /usr/local/etc/cloudflared
   
echo "Linking /usr/local/bin/cloudflared"
ln -sf /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/usr/local/bin/cloudflared /usr/local/bin/cloudflared
   
echo "Linking /usr/local/etc/rc.d/cloudflared"
ln -sf /mnt/pool1/cloudflared/usr/local/etc/rc.d/cloudflared /usr/local/etc/rc.d/cloudflared
   
echo "Configuring the rc service"
sysrc cloudflared_enable="YES"
sysrc cloudflared_mode="tunnel run"
   
service cloudflared start

  2. In Tasks, add an entry under Init/Shutdown Scripts section to call the script in POSTINIT`

References

  1. https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-apps/install-and-setup/tunnel-guide/local/#set-up-a-tunnel-locally-cli-setup ↩