Squid as a captive portal… part 2

This is long overdue, but here it is anyway. The source codes I used to set up Squid as a captive portal. The bundle also includes the squid config file, the redirector script, and the authentication pages.

Requirements:

• Squid
• Apache, PHP 5.2 or higher, and MySQL (which are easily found on almost every Linux-based machine)
• Memcached
• The Memcached PHP Extension from PECL
• The Kohana PHP Framework

In my code, memcached is configured to be running on localhost on port 28888.

Getting started:

Once you have these things set up, these steps should get you up and running:

• Extract all files to a folder, somewhere, on your computer
• Create a new database and import SquidCaptive.sql into it
• Set up a database user which can access the database
• Add a user to the users table in the database. Use sha1-hashing for the password.

• Extract the approot and www-folders to a folder on your webserver
• Configure a vhost in Apache with the document root set to the www-folder. Use a non-standard port number if possible (like, 8080 or 81)
• In index.php in the www-folder, change the $kohana_system variable to the path where Kohana’s files are stored. I did not include the full distribution of Kohana, but only the files I needed.
• In the approot-folder, go to config/database.php and edit it to reflect the correct database user, password and database itself

• Place scripts/redirect.php in a folder which the Squid-user can access.
• In redirect.php, change the host to match the host (or IP) and port of the vhost hosting the authentication page. For example, proxy.lan:8081.
• Update your squid.conf so it uses the redirector… see my squid.conf for details. My squid.conf might have incorrect settings, I am not a Squid-expert but they worked for me.

I think this is about it… do note that it was only a quick implementation which is not feature complete at all. Session don’t expire until memcached is restarted, there is no user registration or billing yet, all it does is authentication. However, it’s a start. Also, beware that not everything is ‘best practice’… I have a few things hardcoded and not configured, such as the vhost and the host and port memcached is running on.

If you need more tips, help or advice, feel free to send me an e-mail. I’ll do my best to help you.

Download: Squid Captive Portal

Squid Captive Portal by Alex van Herwijnen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.