Gmail as domain email server and captive portal
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Hello
I just started to move email from an exchange server in the UK to gmail/google apps
my users in Thailand are sitting behind a pfsense firewall and the captive portal is onbefore it was easy for email as I configured the portal to allow access to the IP address of the mailserver in the UK
most of my users don't have access to the internet but all need to be able to read and write email
captive portal does not allow the entry of a name such as smtp.gmail.com or imap.gmail.com
but the only way to access the imap server and smtp server is through the name and not IP address as those IP addresses are rotated by google (so no assurance that a given set will work)Monday 21 Feb 2011
A couple of days passed and I saw no response :-(
my whole setup with Pfsense is now in peril as I need to get emails from and to gmail working without opening the internet for the majority of the company …
if pfsense is not a workable solution I will need to move on to alternative solutions and bundle that with google apps ... any suggestions?Philip
what is the work around or the solution that my users still cannot access the internet (only through captive portal) but they can get to their email?Philip Van Cleven
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Now you can allow by dns name access in CP.
This is on 2.0 latest snapshots. -
Thanks
I will have a look at it … I probably have to change the hardware though as I am still running 1.2.2 on an old 386 machine with 192 mbyte ram and while it is an old machine it did its job well --- it is so old that it died on 1.2.3 as bsd did not boot correctly (something to do with the ram tables and allocations)
Philip
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@ermal:
Now you can allow by dns name access in CP.
This is on 2.0 latest snapshots.I tried the snapshot of 23 Feb 2011 on a Dell GX620 with one additional card (standard stock) and 1 Gig of ram.
the software loaded without a hitch.
I configured the captive portal (no users) and checked if it was possible to get to the internet and the answer was : display of the login to the captive portal (good)
nothing configured in the captive portal –> no email in thunderbird going in or sending out (using imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com)
configured the captive portal --> allow host names and configured in one direction (from ) to allow the imap and smtp service on gmail
thunderbird was able to receive and send emails while internet was still blocked–--------> success story!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
next question : how far are we from a release of the version 2 as I want to install this as soon as possible. I probably will install the snapshot already at the factory hoping it is stable enough?
I normally have squid running and litesquid for reporting and a cron task to rotate the log files
15 users with no internet but email
10 users on captive portal
10 users not going through the proxyPhilip