recruiting help/collaboration on a captive portal/node configurator
Russell Senior
I have been working on an OpenWrt-based firmware image to go into
Personal Telco Project's new node captive portal/gateway router
devices. I have a prototype that is functional. I'd like to solicit
assistance and collaboration on some remaining problems, as well as on
some configurator infrastructure to automatically generate
node-specific files based on a limited set of inputs (like local
network, node name, node address, node host's logo, etc).
If you have or want to have some experience with OpenWrt firmware
construction, or want to help the Personal Telco Project do what it
does for the community, please contact me and we can arrange a
collaboration kickoff.
Thanks for your help!
--
Russell Senior, Secretary
rus...@personaltelco.net
Charles Wyble
Is there a git repo?
I'm in Southern California and would like to collaborate remotely if at
all possible.
Sara H
Let me know when and where.
~Sara.
Tom Higgins
Kbs to the hood for a public node again. If nothing else it will be
another point of data for testing.
Next couple of weeks I can wangle out a day or so to group up for a
knowledge dump.
-tomh
Russell Senior
Charles> I'm very interested in this.
Charles> Is there a git repo?
It is mostly stock OpenWrt, so there *is* a git repo of that. I am
working on prepping my nocatauth package for upstream'ing. The fringe
on top can be shared, and essentially would be a meta package that
depends on a set of stock OpenWrt packages and some files, but I
haven't set up any infrastructure for that yet.
Charles> I'm in Southern California and would like to collaborate
Charles> remotely if at all possible.
Location needn't be an obstacle.
Thanks!
Russell Senior
Sara> I'm interested, but I don't know how much help I can be. Let
Sara> me know when and where. ~Sara.
Thanks!
gabrielle
Senior<rus...@personaltelco.net> wrote:
> If you have or want to have some experience with OpenWrt firmware
> construction, or want to help the Personal Telco Project do what it
> does for the community, please contact me and we can arrange a
> collaboration kickoff.
I'm interested in learning - my schedule is nuts right now though.
Keep me posted on the meeting time & I will attempt to make it!
gabrielle
Russell Senior
Russell> I have been working on an OpenWrt-based firmware image to go
Russell> into Personal Telco Project's new node captive portal/gateway
Russell> router devices. I have a prototype that is functional. I'd
Russell> like to solicit assistance and collaboration on some
Russell> remaining problems, as well as on some configurator
Russell> infrastructure to automatically generate node-specific files
Russell> based on a limited set of inputs (like local network, node
Russell> name, node address, node host's logo, etc).
We have several people expressing interest in learning about/helping
out with this, which is wonderful, but not so many that we can afford
to lose you if we mis-schedule. How many of you can make a weekly
meeting (wednesday evenings, about 6:30pm?).
Just an update, last night I figured out how to replicate the old
NuCab behavior of DNS for a local .ptp domain and the reverse
11.10.in-addr.arpa zones using dnsmasq.
The main item and highest priority left is to cleanup/rejuvenate the
splash page infrastructure, throwing away things people never look at
and maybe adding things that might be useful, like node news, etc.
The other thing to consider, at a lower priority, is ipv6 stuff. That
could wait for a version 2.
Russell Senior
Russell> The main item and highest priority left is to
Russell> cleanup/rejuvenate the splash page infrastructure, throwing
Russell> away things people never look at and maybe adding things that
Russell> might be useful, like node news, etc.
For reference, and for people who want to play along, I now have a
HowTo for what I am doing for the WgtCab. The technique is readily
adaptable to the AlixCab (just a different architecture and board, but
package selection should be the same). I have removed two files from
the image, which are the crypto keys for establishing an openvpn
tunnel to our tunnel aggregation point. If you actually want to
deploy one of these on our network, please contact me and we'll get
you hooked up with some unique keys.
Here is the link to the wiki page:
http://wiki.personaltelco.net/FooCabFirmwareHowTo
Those instructions should be sufficient to prepare an image ready to
flash. Actually flashing techniques are myriad, so I haven't
addressed that part yet, and of course you need the right device for
that anyway, which you might not have.
Please feel free to ask me questions, make corrections/additions to
the wiki page, etc. If you are in Portland and want to hack on the
actual device (and promise not to brick it), we can probably hook you
up with one on loan.
The thing I really would like help with is making the files in the
/www look good and work well with nocatauth.
If you can provide patches for nocatsplash to build cleanly and files
to configure/work nicely on the image, that would be super fantastic
as well.
Russell Senior
Russell> The thing I really would like help with is making the files
Russell> in the /www look good and work well with nocatauth.
I made a start on the configurator infrastructure, starting with one
of the prototype WgtCab $(TOPDIR)/files overlay and template-izing it
for some of the needed variables. I also created a node database
(tab-delimited flat-file) and added a README. These are retrievable
with git like so:
git clone git://git.personaltelco.net/files-master
You can also browse the tree at:
http://git.personaltelco.net/?p=files-master;a=tree
This is still very much a work in progress. Marino suggested using
m4. I don't know very much about m4. If anyone wants to pitch in and
do something smart and beautiful, that would be utterly fantastic!
Thanks to Jason for setting up git for us!