Captive Portal on a notebook without router
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Hi, how are you? For a school project, I would like to create a hotspot that would take the connected user to a captive portal explaining the dangers of logging into an unknown Wi-Fi network and also share a link to a PDF with more information. I will only use a notebook with its internal wifi card and Pfsense running on a virtual machine. I won't give internet access, just to the website with the warning. I've installed Pfsense and created the captive portal, but I'm having problems setting up the network access for other users. How should I configure everything so other students can access this captive portal?
Thank you so much for your help. Cheers!! -
@extranjero
A pfSense device that doesn't have access to the net ?
That means : no dns.You saw the Troubleshooting Captive Portal : the very first "DNS resolution not functioning" will stop you right there.
Device connecting to a (wifi) network will trow out a 'hidden' http request, right after the DHCP negotiation. This can be any host name (most are know, though), so DNS needs to work.
But you have no WAN .....So no auto captive portal login page opening.
The user could still know that it is connected to a gateway/router, so they could enter http://a.b.c.d (where a.b.c.d) is the IP of the pfSense interface IP.
That wouldn't make the portal login page showing up neither, as needed parameters are missing.Using a laptop for such experiments is making your live hard on yourself. Any sub 50 $ old PC, with at least 2 network interfaces will do the job. Throw in an AP, and your good.
You can always add some rules on the portal interface that block traffic to the outside world (except DNS, right ?!)