FreeBSD The Power to Serve

Sylve — A Unified System Management Platform for FreeBSD

Links:
GitHub URL: https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve
CI URL: https://sylve-ci.alchemilla.io
Discord URL: https://discord.gg/bJB826JvXK

Contact: Hayzam Sherif <hayzam@alchemilla.io>

Sylve is a modern, unified system management platform for FreeBSD, inspired by Proxmox. It intends to provide an integrated web interface for managing virtual machines (via Bhyve), Jails, ZFS storage, networking, and firewalling. The backend is implemented in Go, while the frontend uses SvelteKit with Tailwind CSS and ShadCN UI components.

The project emphasizes a minimal system footprint, currently requiring only sysutils/smartmontools and sysutils/tmux as runtime dependencies.

Sylve addresses a key gap in the FreeBSD ecosystem: a user-friendly, full-featured web interface for system management. By unifying virtualization, storage, and network management, it aims to lower the barrier for users and administrators deploying FreeBSD in complex environments.

We started working on the project since February and have made significant progress across several areas:

  • PAM-Based Authentication: Integrated support for FreeBSD’s native PAM system, with optional fallback to local authentication.

  • Disk Management: Users can view and manage physical disks and partitions through the web UI, with SMART-based health monitoring included.

  • Frontend Infrastructure: Continued development of reusable UI components and layout structure, with a responsive and accessible design.

The project remains under active development and is not yet production-ready.

Planned tasks for the upcoming quarter include:

  • ZFS Management: Implementing full support for creating and managing ZFS pools and datasets via the web interface.

  • Virtual Machine Management: Continuing the Bhyve integration to support VM creation, monitoring, and control.

  • Basic Network and Firewalling: Providing web-based interfaces for NAT, port forwarding, and firewall rule configuration.

Contributions, testing, and feedback are very welcome. If you are interested in contributing, consider helping with:

  • UI testing and accessibility feedback

  • Bug reports and feature requests via GitHub

Sponsor: FreeBSD Foundation and Alchemilla (development and infrastructure support)

Last modified on: April 15, 2025 by Hayzam Sherif