Captive portal for local network only
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Hello guys,
as extended googleing didn't help I am turning to you for help.
I am trying to setup a local network with a server running on a Mac Mini (that part works) and everyone who connects to the network I create shall be automatically redirected to said server.
Now I got out an old Netgear WiFi router I had, deactivated its DHCP server and reused an old Dell laptop to run pfsense off a USB stick and act as a router.
What works is that every device connecting to the WiFi network (provided by the Netgear) or via LAN gets an IP-address by the Dell and is able to see each other.
Now for the difficult part. I am no networking engineer and I might lack understanding but I used a tutorial I found to set up the captive portal with a destination IP and bound it to the LAN device. Now I would expect everything that connects to the network to get to the portal and be redirected to the IP-address I specified but nothing is happening. Even after opening a browser and trying to open a page it just delivers an error message.
What am I missing?
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Providing the error message might help someone help you.
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Hi and thanks for your answer. I can't recall the exact error message as it is generated in Google Chrome on Android and I was pretty sure it just meant that Google was unavailable. Just googled and it was something like ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED or ERR_NAME_RESOLUTION_FAILED.
PFsense didn't show any activity in the captive portal and no active user.
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You have to pass DNS using IP address pass throughs so your clients can resolve names. If the browser can't resolve names the browser never attempts a connection so there's nothing for the captive portal to intercept.
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Pass through? Does this work locally as I don't intend to use an Internet connection. What is passed through and where do I adjust that?
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put 10.10.10.10 in your google chrome address bar and see what happens.
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It apparently waits quite a long time for something to happen (blue progress bar loads to about a third) but then presents me an ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT.
I clicked around in status and found the services running like seen on the picture below. Don't know if that helps.
