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2012-06-14 01:21:21 +02:00

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<head> <title>nodogsplash README</title> </head>
<body>
<h3>0. The Nodogsplash project</h3>
Nodogsplash offers a simple way to
provide restricted access to an internet
connection. It is intended for use on wireless access points running
OpenWRT (but may also work on other Linux-based devices).
<p>
Its functionality is similar to Nocatsplash, but it is derived from
the codebase of the Wifi Guard Dog project. Nodogsplash is released
under the GNU General Public License.
<p>
<ul>
<li>
Nodogsplash:
<a href="http://kokoro.ucsd.edu/nodogsplash">http://kokoro.ucsd.edu/nodogsplash</a>
</li>
<li>
OpenWRT:
<a href="http://openwrt.org/">http://openwrt.org/</a>
</li>
<li>
Wifidog:
<a href="http://dev.wifidog.org/">http://dev.wifidog.org/</a>
</li>
<li>
Nocatsplash:
<a href="http://nocat.net/">http://nocat.net/</a>
</li>
<li>
GNU GPL:
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html</a>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
The following describes how Nodogsplash works, how to get it and run it,
and how to customize its behavior for your application.
<h3>1. Overview</h3>
A simple hotspot controller like Nodogsplash offers a solution to this
problem: You want to provide controlled and reasonably secure public access
to an internet connection; and while you want to require users to give some
acknowledgment of the service you are providing, you don't need or want the
complexity of user account names and passwords and
maintaining a separate database-backed authentication server.
<p>
When installed and running, Nodogsplash implements a simple 'authentication'
protocol. First, it detects any user attempting to
use your internet connection to visit a website. It captures
the request, and instead serves back a 'splash' web page using its own
builtin web server.
The splash page provides a link which, when the user clicks on
it, opens limited access for them to the internet via your connection,
beginning by being redirected to their originally requested website.
This access expires after a certain time interval.
<p>
<p>
Nodogsplash also permits specifying the amount of
bandwidth provided to users, if you don't want to grant all of your
available upload or download bandwidth.
<p>
Specific features of Nodogsplash are configurable, by editing the
configuration file and the
splash page. The default
installed configuration may be all you need, though.
<h3>2. Installing and running nodogsplash</h3>
<ul>
<li>
Have a router working with
<a href="http://openwrt.org/">OpenWRT</a>.
Nodogsplash has been compiled against a OpenWRT White Russian 0.9 buildroot;
it may or may not work on other versions of OpenWRT or on other kinds of
Linux-based router firmware. For notes on using Nodogsplash with OpenWRT Kamikaze, <a href="#kamikaze">see below</a>.
</li>
<li>
Make sure your router is basically
working before you try to install
nodogsplash. In particular, make sure your DHCP daemon
is serving addresses on the interface
that nodogsplash will manage (typically <code>br0</code> or
<code>eth1</code>), and for the
following use ssh or telnet access to your router over a different interface.
</li>
<li>
To install nodogsplash, obtain the <code>nodogsplash*.ipk</code> package you
want to install from the project website, copy it to
<code>/tmp/</code> on your OpenWRT router,
and, in as root on the router, run:
<pre>
ipkg install /tmp/nodogsplash*.ipk
</pre>
Or, to install the latest version, you can just run:
<pre>
ipkg install http://kokoro.ucsd.edu/nodogsplash/latest.ipk
</pre>
</li>
<li>
If the interface that you want nodogsplash to manage is not <code>br0</code>,
edit <code>/etc/nodogsplash/nodogsplash.conf</code> and set
<code>GatewayInterface</code>.
</li>
<li>
To start nodogsplash, run the following, or just reboot the router:
<pre>
/etc/init.d/S65nodogsplash start
</pre>
</li>
<li>
To test the installation, connect a client machine to the interface
on your router that is managed by nodogsplash (for example, connect to
the router's wireless lan) and in a browser on that machine, attempt to visit
any website. You should see the nodogsplash splash page instead. Click on the
icon; the browser should redirect to the initially requested website.
</li>
<li>
To see the current status of your nodogsplash process:
<pre>
/usr/bin/ndsctl status
</pre>
</li>
<li>
To stop nodogsplash:
<pre>
/etc/init.d/S65nodogsplash stop
</pre>
</li>
<li>
To uninstall nodogsplash:
<pre>
ipkg remove nodogsplash
</pre>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>3. How nodogsplash works</h3>
A wireless router running OpenWRT has two or more interfaces; nodogsplash
manages one of them. This will typically be <code>br0</code>,
the bridge to both the wireless and wired LAN; or the wireless lan
interface is typically named <code>eth1</code>
if you have broken the <code>br0</code> bridge to separate the wired and
wireless LAN's.
<p>
<h4>3.1 Packet filtering</h4>
Nodogsplash considers four kinds of packets coming into the router
over the managed interface:
<ol>
<li>
<em>Blocked</em>, if the source MAC address of the packet matches one
listed in the BlockedMACList in the configuration file.
These packets are dropped. (Caveat: this is not
a particularly secure mechanism, since MAC addresses are easy to spoof.)
</li>
<li>
<em>Trusted</em>, if the source MAC address of the packet matches one
listed in the TrustedMACList in the configuration file.
These packets are accepted and routed to any destination address and port.
(Caveat: this is not
a particularly secure mechanism, since MAC addresses are easy to spoof.)
</li>
<li>
<em>Authenticated</em>, if the packet's IP and MAC source address has gone
through the nodogsplash authentication process and has not yet
expired. These packets are accepted and routed to a limited set of
addresses and ports (see <code>FirewallRuleSet authenticated-users</code>
and
<code>FirewallRuleSet users-to-router</code>
in the <code>nodogsplash.conf</code> configuration file).
</li>
<li>
<em>Preauthenticated</em>.
Any other packet. These packets are accepted only to the DNS port
on addresses forwarded through the router, and to ports
and protocols opened in
<code>FirewallRuleSet users-to-router</code>
in the <code>nodogsplash.conf</code> configuration file.
Any other packet is dropped, except that a packet
for destination port 80 at any address is redirected to port 2050 on
the router, where nodogsplash's builtin
<a href="http://www.hughes.com.au/products/libhttpd/">
libhttpd-based</a>
web server is listening. This begins
the 'authentication' process. The
server will serve a splash page back to the source IP address of the
packet. The user clicking the appropriate link on the splash page will complete
the process, causing future packets from this
IP/MAC address to be marked as
<em>Authenticated</em> until the inactive or forced timeout is reached,
and its packets revert to being <em>Preauthenticated</em>.
</li>
</ol>
Nodogsplash implements these actions by
inserting rules in the router's iptables mangle
PREROUTING table to mark packets, and by inserting
rules in the nat PREROUTING, filter INPUT and
filter FORWARD chains which match on those marks.
Because it inserts its rules at the beginning
of existing chains, nodogsplash should be
insensitive to most typical existing firewall
configurations.
<p>
Of course, there is the usual tradeoff between security and usability.
For example, not opening ports 25 and 80 in the
<code>FirewallRuleSet users-to-router</code>
helps to prevent unauthorized administrative access to your router,
but (if you have an empty TrustedMACList) does this by blocking
<em>all</em> ssh and http access to the router from the managed
interface.
<p>
<h4>3.2 Traffic control</h4>
Nodogsplash also optionally implements basic traffic control on its
managed interface. This feature lets you specify the maximum
aggregate upload and download bandwidth that can be taken by clients
connected on that interface.
<p>
Nodogsplash implements this functionality by enabling two
intermediate queue devices (IMQ's), one for upload and one for download,
and attaching simple rate-limited
HTB qdiscs to them. Rules are inserted in the router's iptables
mangle PREROUTING and POSTROUTING tables to jump to these IMQ's. The
result is simple but effective tail-drop rate limiting (no packet
classification or fairness queueing is done).
<h3>4. Customizing nodogsplash</h3>
The default shipped configuration is intended to be usable and reasonably
secure as-is for basic internet sharing applications, but it is
customizable.
<ul>
<li>
To change basic nodogsplash settings, edit the configuration file:
<pre>
/etc/nodogsplash/nodogsplash.conf
</pre>
</li>
<li>
To change the contents of the splash page, edit the splash page file:
<pre>
/etc/nodogsplash/htdocs/splash.html
</pre>
When the splash page is served, the following variables in the page are
replaced by their values:
<ul>
<li>
<code>$gatewayname</code> The value of
<code>GatewayName</code> as set in <code>nodogsplash.conf</code>.
</li>
<li>
<code>$authtarget</code> A URL which encodes a unique token and
the URL of the user's original web request. If nodogsplash receives a
request at this URL, it completes the authentication process for
the client and replies
to the request with a "307 Temporary Redirect" to the encoded originally
requested URL.
</li>
<li>
<code>$imagesdir</code> The directory in nodogsplash's web hierarchy
where images to be displayed in the splash page must be located.
</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<h3>5. Debugging nodogsplash</h3>
<ul>
<li>
To see verbose debugging output from nodogsplash,
edit the <code>/etc/init.d/S65nodogsplash</code> file to set the
<code>OPTIONS</code>
variable to the flags <code>"-s -d 7"</code>, restart or reboot, and
view messages with logread.
The <code>-s</code> flag logs to syslog; the <code>-d 7</code> flag
sets the maximally verbose level for debugging messages (see syslog.h).
You don't want to run with these flags routinely, as it will
quickly fill the syslog circular buffer, unless you enable remote logging.
<p>
Alternatively, you can set the flag <code>-f</code> instead of <code>-s</code>,
and restart.
This will run nodogsplash in the foreground, logging to stdout.
</li>
<li>
When stopped, nodogsplash deletes its iptables rules,
attempting to leave the router's firewall in its original state. If
not (for example, if nodogsplash crashes instead of exiting cleanly)
subsequently starting and stopping nodogsplash should remove its rules.
</li>
<li>
Nodogsplash operates by marking packets (and, if traffic control
is enabled, passing packets through intermediate queueing devices).
Most QOS packages will also mark packets and use IMQ's. Therefore
one or both of Nodgsplash and a QOS package may malfunction
if used together. Potential conflicts may be investigated by
looking at your overall iptables setup.
To check to see all the
rules in, for example, the mangle table chains, run
<pre>
iptables -t mangle -v -n -L
</pre>
For extensive suggestions on debugging iptables, see for example
<a href="http://iptables-tutorial.frozentux.net/iptables-tutorial.html">
Oskar Andreasson's tutorial</a>.
</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="kamikaze">Using Nodogsplash with Kamikaze</h3>
Eventually, new releases of Nodogsplash will be compiled against
some stable version of OpenWRT Kamikaze. Meanwhile,
Nodogsplash has been tested on some versions of Kamikaze and found
to work, if these changes are made:
<ul>
<li>
The default name for the (wired and wireless) LAN interface in Kamikaze is
<code>br-lan</code>.
Edit <code>/etc/nodogsplash/nodogsplash.conf</code> and set
<code>GatewayInterface</code> appropriately.
</li>
<li>
Kamikaze moves to a different
(more standard) way of organizing init scripts. Executable
scripts reside in <code>/etc/init.d</code>, but appropriately named symlinks
in <code>/etc/rc.d</code> determine the sequencing of scripts at boot.
After installing Nodogsplash, do the following:
<pre>
cd /etc/init.d
mv S65nodogsplash nodogsplash
cd /etc/rc.d
ln /etc/init.d/nodogsplash S65nodogsplash
</pre>
And then use <code>/etc/init.d/nodogsplash</code> to start and stop
Nodogsplash from the command line.
</li>
</ul>
Thanks to Tobias Pal and Jeff Allen for testing on Kamikaze.
<hr>
Email contact: nodogsplash (at) kokoro.ucsd.edu
</body>
</html>