[SUCS Devel] GuestNet MACs

[Matthew Gwynne]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 07:52:07AM +0100, Chris Jones wrote:
> Matthew Gwynne wrote:
> > I'm trying to further the efforts of Dez and chckens on the member
> > settings/options component for the site and was wondering exactly how
> > GuestNet MACs are handled. It seems to me that they are simply stored
> > in the sucs database as a list of (mac,uid) pairs but there was
> > mention of MAC addresses for wifi or something too, and I don't see
> > how pair list would differentiate?
> >   
> We never really got the wifi working, if we were to offer wifi access it
> would probably just be any old dhcp lease to connect to the room then
> connect using ipsec or something like that to allow outgoing
> connections. Thus we don't care about wireless mac addresses.
> 
> Of course thats just my idea, and I've never gotten around to doing
> anything about it, if somebody else wants to set it up they are more
> than welcome to do what ever they like (as long as it meets the security
> requirements!)
> 
> (Grandmothers and eggs probably but hey...) It would be great if your
> new stuff would both allow members to add and remove attached mac
> addresses and merge the existing auto signup stuff (see
> /var/www/guestnet/) into the main site.
> 
> It would be even better if the main site could somehow treat specially
> people visiting from the auto reg range (137.44.10.130 to .135)
> directing them to the auto reg page.

It seems to me that that shouldn't be too hard. Looking at the
GuestNET python page, it just seems to check if the IP coming in is in
the unregistered GuestNET range and then runs a few scripts that are
already there to find the MAC address from gw, and to update dchp
stuff once the db has been updated. 

So if this were moved, how would the flow of it then work? Rather than
being redirected to the current GuestNET script, people would be
redirected to the options page which if the person was on one of the
unregistered GuestNET ips, it would display a friendly message telling
them that if they login, they can update their GuestNET MAC address,
and then the options page has a check once they are logged in, so that
it will display their currently stored MAC address and currently used
MAC address (only if different) in two disabled fields with an Update
button and a warning?

I can certainly begin putting some code in for this in the component,
although testing is a bit of a nuisance as some of the scripts need
the user calling to be apache to work correctly, and it's the same
with testing other user contact details updates etc, as those require
access to the sucs db. I initially thought with the contact details
that it would be best to try and bodge a few test tables into the test
db I was using and make the db used easily changable, and I guess I
could stay with that and simply make the owners of the files I have
checked out apache to be able to run those scripts? 

For now I can chuck some untested code together and leave some of it
commented out and then perhaps test some of it Friday lunchtime if I
have time or certainly on Monday (as I'll be in the room waiting for a
few hours).

Matthew Gwynne / Aeternus