[Commotion-discuss] Commotion Splash Screen

[Joshua Breitbart]

On 9/12/13 10:11 AM, Ryan Gerety wrote:
> For now, we just need a way to let people know there is a
> splash/community/apps page right?
> 
> Perhaps access points should be named "go to x" so that people would
> have some idea of where to go?

But that instruction would only make sense if the Internet was down and
the splash page wasn't working, right? So it's another node-by-node
adjustment you would have to make after an outage.

If I understand it correctly, you would still be able to get to a
locally-hosted page or service by entering in the IP address, so we'd
have to socialize an emergency IP address for people to enter in advance
of an Internet outage, the way people in the US know to dial 911 in case
of emergency. Or is that not how it would work?


> 
> 
> 
> On 9/12/2013 8:24 AM, Dan Staples wrote:
>> Hi Dan,
>>
>> Unfortunately, the splash screen currently requires internet access to
>> function. This is because the captive portal program intercepts and
>> modifies responses to clients' DNS requests, and those responses only
>> occur if DNS servers are available in the first place. With no internet
>> access, no DNS response, no splash screen.
>>
>> I have worked on creating a captive portal solution for
>> non-internet-connected Commotion networks, and it in fact works. The
>> problem is that there is currently no way to have a router auto-detect
>> whether it is currently connected to the internet or not, and then
>> auto-configure its captive portal to do the right thing. If your network
>> suffered an internet outage, you would have to either restart DNSmasq on
>> each node, or reboot all the nodes, in order for the splash screen to
>> continue to function. And then do the same thing once internet access
>> was restored.
>>
>> There might be a way to run a script periodically to check for internet
>> connectivity, and then restart DNSmasq if it detects an outage. I'll try
>> to work on that and see what I can do.
>>
>> Do you know what versions of Firefox and Chrome didn't work with the
>> splash page? If you can find out, I can look into that too.
>>
>> cheers,
>> Dan
>>
>>
>> On 09/12/2013 07:40 AM, Dan Hastings wrote:
>>> Yesterday we had our first large internet outage since setting up our
>>> first few commotion nodes.  I have our homepage in the our computer lab
>>> set to google.com but since we are on an open network the commotion
>>> splash screen comes up first.  This is great since it makes it easier
>>> for students to access local applications without having to memorize the
>>> location of the applications on the network. 
>>>
>>> However, when our net went out the splash screen did not come up.  I was
>>> wondering if anyone knew a way to set the splash screen so it will come
>>> up regardless if their is internet access. Should the splash screen
>>> appear anyway regardless and am I'm missing something in the captive
>>> portal settings? Is there way to set the splash screen as a homepage?
>>>
>>> Also, I've noticed that some students who are running older versions of
>>> Firefox and chrome in windows 7 would not be redirected to the splash
>>> screen and could not access the internet.  After updating their browsers
>>> we seemed to get to the splash screen fine to allow internet access. Not
>>> sure if this has been a problem in the past or of I'm missing something
>>> as well.
>>>
>>> Any guidance or help would be much appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Dan
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Commotion-discuss mailing list
>>> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>>>
>>
> 
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