openwrt-packages-dist/net/travelmate/files

travelmate, a wlan connection manager for travel router

Description

If you’re planning an upcoming vacation or a business trip, taking your laptop, tablet or smartphone give you the ability to connect with friends or complete work on the go. But many hotels don’t have a secure wireless network setup or you’re limited on using a single device at once. Investing in a portable, mini travel router is a great way to connect all of your devices at once while having total control over your own personalized wireless network.
A logical combination of AP+STA mode on one physical radio allows most of OpenWrt supported router devices to connect to a wireless hotspot/station (STA) and provide a wireless access point (AP) from that hotspot at the same time. Downside of this solution: whenever the STA interface looses the connection it will go into an active scan cycle which renders the radio unusable for AP mode operation, therefore the AP is taken down if the STA looses its association.
To avoid these kind of deadlocks, travelmate will set all station interfaces to an "always off" mode and connects automatically to available/configured hotspots.

Main Features

• STA interfaces operating in an "always off" mode, to make sure that the AP is always accessible
• easy setup within normal OpenWrt environment
• strong LuCI-Support with builtin interface wizard and a wireless station manager
• render the QR-Code of the selected Access Point in LuCI to comfortably transfer the WLAN credentials to your mobile devices
• fast uplink connections
• support all kinds of uplinks, incl. hidden and enterprise uplinks (WEP-based uplinks are no longer supported!)
• continuously checks the existing uplink connection (quality), e.g. for conditional uplink (dis-) connections
• automatically add open uplinks to your wireless config, e.g. hotel captive portals
• captive portal detection with internet online check and a 'heartbeat' function to keep the uplink connection up & running
• captive portal auto-login hook (configured via uci/LuCI), you are able to reference an external script for captive portal auto-logins (see example below)
• includes a vpn hook with support for 'wireguard' or 'openvpn' client setups to handle VPN (re-) connections automatically
• includes an email hook to 'msmtp' to send notification e-mails after every succesful uplink connect
• proactively scan and switch to a higher prioritized uplink, despite of an already existing connection
• connection tracking which keeps start and end date of an uplink connection
• automatically disable the uplink after n minutes, e.g. for timed connections
• automatically (re-)enable the uplink after n minutes, e.g. after failed login attempts
• option to generate a random unicast MAC address for each uplink connection
• ntp time sync before sending emails
• support devices with multiple radios in any order
• procd init and ntp-hotplug support
• runtime information available via LuCI & via 'status' init command
• status & debug logging to syslog

Prerequisites

• OpenWrt, only compatible with the forthcoming stable 20.x or the latest OpenWrt snapshot
• 'dnsmasq' as dns backend
• 'iwinfo' for wlan scanning
• 'curl' for connection checking and all kinds of captive portal magic, e.g. cp detection and auto-logins
• a 'wpad' variant to support various WPA encrypted networks (WEP-based uplinks are no longer supported!)
• optional: 'qrencode' for AP QR code support
• optional: 'wireguard' or 'openvpn' for vpn client connections
• optional: 'msmtp' to send out travelmate related status messages via email

Installation & Usage

• before you start with travelmate you should setup at least one Access Point, ideally on a separate radio
• download travelmate
• download luci-app-travelmate
• install both packages (opkg install travelmate, opkg install luci-app-travelmate)
• the LuCI application is located under the 'Services' menu
• start the travelmate 'Interface Wizard' once
• add multiple uplink stations as you like via the 'Wireless Stations' tab
• happy traveling ...

Travelmate config options

• usually the pre-configured travelmate setup works quite well and no manual config overrides are needed, all listed options apply to the 'global' section:

Option	Default	Description/Valid Values
trm_enabled	0, disabled	set to 1 to enable the travelmate service (this will be done by the Interface Wizard as well!)
trm_debug	0, disabled	set to 1 to get the full debug output (logread -e "trm-")
trm_iface	-, not set	uplink- and procd trigger network interface, configured by the 'Interface Wizard'
trm_radio	-, not set	restrict travelmate to a single radio or change the overall scanning order ('radio1 radio0')
trm_captive	1, enabled	check the internet availability and handle captive portal redirections
trm_netcheck	0, disabled	treat missing internet availability as an error
trm_proactive	1, enabled	proactively scan and switch to a higher prioritized uplink, despite of an already existing connection
trm_autoadd	0, disabled	automatically add open uplinks like hotel captive portals to your wireless config
trm_randomize	0, disabled	generate a random unicast MAC address for each uplink connection
trm_triggerdelay	2	additional trigger delay in seconds before travelmate processing begins
trm_maxretry	3	retry limit to connect to an uplink
trm_minquality	35	minimum signal quality threshold as percent for conditional uplink (dis-) connections
trm_maxwait	30	how long should travelmate wait for a successful wlan uplink connection
trm_timeout	60	overall retry timeout in seconds
trm_scanbuffer	1024	buffer size in bytes to prepare nearby scan results
trm_captiveurl	http://captive.apple.com	four pre-configured provider URLs that will be used for connectivity- and captive portal checks
trm_useragent	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64...	five pre-configured user agents that will be used for connectivity- and captive portal checks
trm_nice	0, normal priority	change the priority of the travelmate background processing
trm_vpn	0, disabled	automatically handle VPN (re-) connections
trm_vpnservice	-, not set	reference the already configured 'wireguard' or 'openvpn' client instance as vpn provider
trm_vpniface	-, not set	the logical vpn interface, e.g. 'wg0' or 'tun0'
trm_laniface	-, not set	the logical lan network interface, e.g. 'br-lan'
trm_mail	0, disabled	sends notification e-mails after every succesful uplink connect
trm_mailreceiver	-, not set	e-mail receiver address for travelmate notifications
trm_mailsender	no-reply@travelmate	e-mail sender address for travelmate notifications
trm_mailtopic	travelmate connection to ''	topic for travelmate notification E-Mails
trm_mailprofile	trm_notify	profile used by 'msmtp' for travelmate notification E-Mails

• per uplink exist an additional 'uplink' section in the travelmate config, with the following options:

Option	Default	Description/Valid Values
enabled	1, enabled	enable or disable the uplink in travelmate
device	-, not set	match the 'device' in the wireless config section
ssid	-, not set	match the 'ssid' in the wireless config section
bssid	-, not set	match the 'bssid' in the wireless config section
con_start	-, not set	connection start (will be automatically set after a successful ntp sync)
con_end	-, not set	connection end (will be automatically set after a successful ntp sync)
con_start_expiry	0, disabled	automatically disable the uplink after n minutes, e.g. for timed connections
con_end_expiry	0, disabled	automatically (re-)enable the uplink after n minutes, e.g. after failed login attempts
script	-, not set	reference to an external auto login script for captive portals
script_args	-, not set	optional runtime args for the auto login script

VPN client setup

Please follow one of the following guides to get a working vpn client setup on your travel router:

• Wireguard client setup guide
• OpenVPN client setup guide

Once your vpn client connection is running, you can reference to that setup in travelmate to handle VPN (re-) connections automatically.

E-Mail setup

To use E-Mail notifications you have to setup the package 'msmtp'.

Modify the file '/etc/msmtprc', e.g. for gmail:

[...]
defaults
auth            on
tls             on
tls_certcheck   off
timeout         5
syslog          LOG_MAIL
[...]
account         trm_notify
host            smtp.gmail.com
port            587
from            xxx@gmail.com
user            yyy
password        zzz

Finally enable E-Mail support in travelmate and add a valid E-Mail receiver address.

Captive Portal auto-logins

For automated captive portal logins you can reference an external shell script per uplink. All login scripts should be executable and located in '/etc/travelmate' with the extension '.login'. Currently the package ships five ready to run auto-login scripts:
* 'wifionice.login' for german ICE hotspots * 'db-bahn.login' for german DB railway hotspots via portal login API (still WIP, only tested at Hannover central station) * 'chs-hotel.login' for german chs hotels * 'h-hotels.login' for Telekom hotspots in german h+hotels * 'generic-user-pass.login' a template to demonstrate the optional parameter handling in login scripts

A typical and successful captive portal login looks like this:

[...]
Thu Sep 10 13:30:16 2020 user.info trm-2.0.0[26222]: captive portal domain 'www.wifionice.de' added to to dhcp rebind whitelist
Thu Sep 10 13:30:19 2020 user.info trm-2.0.0[26222]: captive portal login '/etc/travelmate/wifionice.login ' for 'www.wifionice.de' has been executed with rc '0'
Thu Sep 10 13:30:19 2020 user.info trm-2.0.0[26222]: connected to uplink 'radio1/WIFIonICE/-' with mac 'B2:9D:F5:96:86:A4' (1/3)
[...]

Hopefully more scripts for different captive portals will be provided by the community!

Runtime information

receive travelmate runtime information:

root@2go_ar750s:~# /etc/init.d/travelmate status
::: travelmate runtime information
  + travelmate_status  : connected (net ok/100)
  + travelmate_version : 2.0.0
  + station_id         : radio1/WIFIonICE/-
  + station_mac        : B2:9D:F5:96:86:A4
  + station_interface  : trm_wwan
  + wpa_flags          : sae: ✔, owe: ✔, eap: ✔, suiteb192: ✔
  + run_flags          : captive: ✔, proactive: ✔, netcheck: ✘, autoadd: ✘, randomize: ✔
  + ext_hooks          : ntp: ✔, vpn: ✘, mail: ✘
  + last_run           : 2020.09.10-15:21:19
  + system             : GL.iNet GL-AR750S (NOR/NAND), OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r14430-2dda301d40

To debug travelmate runtime problems, please always enable the 'trm_debug' flag, restart travelmate and scan the system log (logread -e "trm-")

Support

Please join the travelmate discussion in this forum thread or contact me by mail

Removal

• stop the travelmate daemon with /etc/init.d/travelmate stop
• optional: remove the travelmate package (opkg remove luci-app-travelmate, opkg remove travelmate)

Have fun!
Dirk