FreedomPortal

The FreedomPortal project is an exhibition of digital artworks installed on Wi-Fi routers spread out in the public space.

These instructions explain how to :

• create a FreedomPortal app
• deploy that app on a Wi-Fi router, so that it act as a captive portal for all clients connecting

In order to use these instructions, You need a Wi-Fi router:

• able to support openWRT (https://openwrt.org/)
• with a USB port so you can plug a USB key to extend the router's disk space
• with enough flash memory (I am unsure of the exact amount of memory necessary, but probably 8Mb or more)

We have been using GL-inet routers, which have all of the above, and come with openWRT pre-installed. Following instructions are for these specific routers, but can be easily adapted to another model.

Creating a FreedomPortal app

App structure

In its simplest form, i.e. if you only want to serve static html and assets, a FreedomPortal app is a node.js app with the following structure :

my-app/
    config.js
    package.json
    www/
        assets/
            css/
                styles.css
            js/
                app.js
        index.html
        pageA.html
        pageB.html

• config.js : config for the FreedomPortal app.
• package.json : config for node.js.
• www : folder containing your html, css and other assets.

Getting started

First, you must have node.js and npm installed on your system.

Then, with your terminal create a folder and inside that folder initialize the node app :

mkdir my-app
cd my-app
npm init

Once this is done, install the FreedomPortal library :

npm install --save freedom-portal

Finally create a config file for your FreedomPortal app. You can find an example there.

Then, you can try that everything works by starting the app :

node ./node_modules/freedom-portal/bin/main.js /absolute/path/to/config.js

Go to http://localhost/ with your browser, check that your html pages and assets are served correctly.

Deploying on a Wi-Fi router

Prepare USB key

Format a USB key, create a single partition ext4 called PORTALKEY (to match the configurations in scripts/). The reason we need ext4, is that we need to be able to create symlinks.

Copy the source code of your FreedomPortal app on the usb stick under PortalApp/.

Create a log/ directory for log files.

Initialize router password, connect through SSH

On first connection on GL-inet routers, go to the router's web interface 192.168.8.1 to set a password which will be used to connect through SSH.

Use that password to connect through SSH ssh [email protected] .

Deactivate router's web server

We need to stop the default router's web server, and disable it so it won't be started at next boot.

/etc/init.d/uhttpd stop
/etc/init.d/lighttpd stop
/etc/init.d/uhttpd disable
/etc/init.d/lighttpd disable

Install / remove packages

For this step, the router needs Internet access.

To make some space, we will remove some unused packages. Run the following :

NB: the first and second commands might need to run twice, because packages we are trying to remove depend upon each other.

opkg remove gl-inet luci luci-base luci-* lua lighttpd-* lighttpd
opkg remove gl-inet luci luci-base luci-* lua lighttpd-* lighttpd
opkg remove kmod-video*
opkg remove kmod-video*
opkg remove mjpg-streamer
rm -rf /usr/lib/lua
rm -rf /usr/lib/lighttpd/
rm -rf /www/*

Then to install the packages we need, first update repo with :

opkg update

Then install nodejs :

opkg install nodejs 

Start the app on boot

Copy the script for starting the portal app on startup :

cp scripts/portalapp-init.d /etc/init.d/portalapp

make it executable :

chmod +x /etc/init.d/portalapp

Activate at next boot by running

/etc/init.d/portalapp enable

You can test that everything works by launching the server with

/etc/init.d/portalapp start

Redirect all requests to the app

Redirect DNS queries to the server's IP

Add this line to /etc/config/dhcp

    config dnsmasq
    ...
    list address '/#/192.168.8.1'

Redirect all IP addresses to server's IP

Add this to the end of /etc/config/firewall

config redirect
        option src 'lan'
        option proto 'tcp'
        option src_ip '!192.168.8.1'
        option src_dport '80'
        option dest_ip '192.168.8.1'
        option dest_port '80'

Setup wireless

in /etc/config/wireless change the encryption option to none and change the ssid. Max length of SSID is 32 characters!

Checklists

Testing

• try to put an https address in address bar
• try to put IP address in address bar
• try to put non-https url

HTML page basics

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <title>192.168.0.1:Where the WiFi comes from</title>