Captiveportal Database Backup?
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PFsense is a wonderful product first of all. I only have one minor problem. Anytime config changes are done to the captive portal interface, OR the webgui is restarted, all captive portal registrations are deleted. I believe this is because lPFsense is restoring them from scratch.
My question is, I have found where they captive portal database is, I believe if i backup this file before it gets deleted, and restore it after, i should have all my registrations still available.
I wanted to know if there was any technical reasons why this hasn't been done yet. For now i'm just going to write a script that backups the file and restores it. I maybe will go a little deeper and actually write it to the config file. This way another box can be deployed while keeping the same user registrations.
I have 100+ Users, so wthen mine captive portal database gets reset, i have a massive amount of users loading the CP page. It just kills my processor power. However, once the they have all registered i don't have this problem.
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Backing up the captive portal database file and restoring it after reboot does not work. I know because I have tried it for the same reason you have mentioned. Captive portal is not currently setup to read the database file and reload the rules.
I needed Captive portal to run much faster especially just after a reboot or setting change for Captive Portal.
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,8861.msg50280.html#msg50280 -
Use a radius server for authentication. This way you can add, delete, modify users without others being unauthenticated.
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In my case I am using Radius. The problem is that if I reboot the firewall or make a change on the main tab of captive portal then everyone is logged off and are required to log back in. That is a minor inconvenience to the clients unless it happens often. It is more of an issue if you have many clients that authenticate with the GUI all at once this will tie up all the lighttpd php listeners at that point the GUI will appear to be locked up. To get around that in pfSense 1.2 use the instructions I provided in the link above. For pfSense 1.3 these changes will be incorporated.
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@mcrane:
In my case I am using Radius. The problem is that if I reboot the firewall or make a change on the main tab of captive portal then everyone is logged off and are required to log back in. That is a minor inconvenience to the clients unless it happens often. It is more of an issue if you have many clients that authenticate with the GUI all at once this will tie up all the lighttpd php listeners at that point the GUI will appear to be locked up. To get around that in pfSense 1.2 use the instructions I provided in the link above. For pfSense 1.3 these changes will be incorporated.
Are you saying that in 1.3 we will be able to change settings without the database getting reset? I actually did the changes you mentioned, and it did seem to help. I'll just keep an eye out, hopefully more users will request that this be fixed.
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The changes that I mentioned in the link will be done for sure in 1.3 Scott Ulrich has already made some of the changes. There are a few more to go. I also would find it useful to have the users remain logged in after reboot or settings change so I'm considering taking that on. First I need to coordinate with another commiter that stated desire to work on Captive Portal.