2012-05-21 - Re: [GRASE-Hotspot] Changing 10.1.0.1 to hostname

Header Data

From: Jurica Smolić <ju***c@vilasmolic.co.uk>
Message Hash: 29c8707a850f39eb217253f318ec6893af99b1409be570c9b981613be4a06524
Message ID: <EDF086D1-94BD-46E2-A439-5AD13189D913@vilasmolic.co.uk>
Reply To: <4FBA1F56.6060002@gmail.com>
UTC Datetime: 2012-05-21 05:42:39 UTC
Raw Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 13:42:39 +0100

Raw message 

In my opinion it would just look more professional... Without ips and shortening the url... Its not to discredit the grase trademark just would look nicer...

Sent from my iPhone

On 21 May 2012, at 11:56, Tim White <ti***8@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 21/05/12 19:46, Jurica Smolić wrote:
>> Hi tim is it possible to have the host name rather then the ip in the url when users connect to hotspot?
>> 
>> Also is it possible to remove grase out of the url. So it reads http://hotspot/radmi or uam etc?
> 
> Hi Jurica.
> 
> It is possible, however the reason we use ip address instead of hostname is reliability. For example, some users have hard coded DNS settings, which will work once they are logged in, but might not work before hand. So basically, in testing, it was decided to use ip address (which is very common for captive portals) for reliability.
> 
> Some options.
> 
> 1. We can use an external domain name (like login.grasehotspot.org) which points to 10.1.0.1. However, anyone who wants to change the range then has to make it use ip address again.
> 
> 2. We use the local DNS with a hostname (and in fact we already do) and don't worry about the few users who for some reason don't resolve the local DNS. (Ignore the fact we can "force" local DNS via iptables, some users DNS just isn't going to work).
> This option is already kinda there, grasehotspot.lan resolves to the hotspots local address, logout resolves to 1.0.0.0 which is a special logout ip address to force logout, and logoff also resolves to 1.0.0.0. However, as previously said, this doesn't always work well.
> 
> Feel free to open a ticket (trac.grasehotspot.org) and I'll look into making it an option to use hostname.
> 
> As for removing the grase part out of the URL, yes, but no. So that we can package it up without it interfering with other packages on the server (i.e you might want to run a website off the same computer for the local intranet), we only "hijack" urls below /grase/. (See the Alias in the Apache conf file). While you could have 2 aliases, one for /radmin and one for /uam, there are a few files and directories in /grase/ that are shared between them, and some of them could easily conflict with a website on that host.
> This isn't something that can be easily made configurable as it would require changing files that are installed by a package, which can then cause problems.
> Other than making the URL shorter, what's your reason for wanting to remove grase from the url? Given that users don't have to type the url, and if you are on the hotspot side, getting the link to admin is easy.
> 
> Tim

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