{"id":211,"date":"2010-02-22T13:57:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T17:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/?p=211"},"modified":"2010-04-11T16:56:42","modified_gmt":"2010-04-11T20:56:42","slug":"finally-saying-no-to-nocatsplash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/what\/finally-saying-no-to-nocatsplash\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally Saying No to NoCatSplash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the last 6 months or so, I’ve been running a free wireless access point for my neighborhood. In an effort to get my local community to know each other (and local goings-on), I’ve back-ended the system using the elgg<\/a> social networking platform.<\/p>\n

To use the free wifi, you have to register on the social site.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Captive Portal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Uptime however has been a major pain – for quite some time NoCatSplash<\/a> has been broken in DD-WRT<\/a>. Ever since version 24 (at the very least), it’s been grouchy – all of the sudden not working and requiring a reboot (or possibly clearing and resetting the iptables targets and restarting splashd)\u00a0 to fix. The wiki documents a few workarounds<\/a>, but I’ve gotten tired of the overall bugs.<\/p>\n

Initially I planned on simply fixing it, but after a little bit of thought,\u00a0 I decided to give OpenWRT<\/a> another look. I’m sure I could have gotten away with using the mini or micro versions of DD-WRT and adding to it, but last time I used OpenWRT’s build environment I was really impressed – so I spent this weekend working with it again.<\/p>\n

Building your own image is simple – using the ImageBuilder<\/a> system (I’m working with WRT-54G’s)\u00a0 simply “make image” setting the target PROFILE<\/strong> and PACKAGES<\/strong> via environment variables. This method uses existing binary packages to build a .bin or .trx file for easy installation (via the web interface or mtd command). “make info<\/em>” will give you a long list of profiles, and packages that are readily available are contained in the packages subdirectory.<\/p>\n

Recompiling packages is extremely easy – download the SDK:<\/p>\n

mkdir ~\/devel && cd ~\/devel<\/p>\n

wget http:\/\/downloads.openwrt.org\/kamikaze\/8.09.2\/brcm-2.4\/OpenWrt-SDK-brcm-2.4-for-Linux-i686.tar.bz2<\/p>\n

tar xjvpf OpenWrt-SDK-brcm-2.4-for-Linux-i686.tar.bz2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the package already exists, check it out via subversion:<\/p>\n

cd OpenWrt-SDK-brcm-2.4-for-Linux-i686<\/p>\n

svn export svn:\/\/svn.openwrt.org\/openwrt\/packages\/net\/<packagename>\u00a0 package\/<packagename><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And to compile simply execute:<\/p>\n

make package\/<packagename>\/compile V=99<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(On older versions it’s “make package\/<packagename>–<\/strong>compile V=99″)<\/p>\n

After hitting my head against the nocatsplash package’s failure to build correctly, I finally opted to look at nodogsplash<\/a>. “Because it will at least build” is probably not the best way to choose captive portal software, but it’s mine.<\/p>\n

First thing requiring a fix is a bug that causes nodogsplash to crash when one sends a request to the auth-server without a “redir” GET variable being set – a bug evidenced by:<\/p>\n

links “http:\/\/192.168.1.1:2050\/nodogsplash_auth\/?tok=fffffff”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thankfully the crash is “gracefully” handled in safe.c’s safe_strdup()…. but it still causes the daemon to crash.<\/p>\n

So – a quick patch, as well as some added “features” (including a magic token) and I’m set. Patches to source can be added to package\/<packagename>\/patches. Upon make, patches in this directory are first applied.<\/p>\n

So instead of waiting around for a fix to NoCatSplash in DD-WRT, I’m moving on. So far NoDogSplash has proven effective – although I’m far from actually migrating to it (the old access point is still running for the time being). In the next few weeks I should have a custom web interface built, as well as pmacctd <\/a>configured (I am exporting Netflow version 9 data to a collector as a C.Y.A <\/a>measure), and bandwidth shaping properly enabled.<\/p>\n

Custom patches to NoDogSplash are forthcoming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last 6 months or so, I’ve been running a free wireless access point for my neighborhood. In an effort to get my local community to know each other (and local goings-on), I’ve back-ended the system using the elgg social networking platform. To use the free wifi, you have to register on the social … Continue reading Finally Saying No to NoCatSplash<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1,18,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rf","category-what","category-wireless","category-wrt-54g"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}