RADIUSdesk / Blog: Recent posts

You can read more about the release on our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/radiusdesk

Cheers

Here:

http://www.radiusdesk.com/developers_corner/index#paypal_hookup

Please try it out and gives us feedback.

Cheers

After many months of coding and collaboration with the community we are very exited about this release of RADIUSdesk which includes a feature complete MESHdesk!

• Now you can deploy mesh networks real quick and easy with the help of MESHdesk
• Current hardware that has been tested with the MESHdesk firmware includes:
  • Dragino2 (MS14 or MP2)
  • OpenMesh.com OM2P
  • Ubiquity Picostation M2
  • Ubiquity UniFi AP
  • Ubiquity UniFi AP-LR
• For more detail on MESHdesk check out the Wiki page on the RADIUSdesk homepage:
  http://www.radiusdesk.com/meshdesk_user_guide

Overview

The time since the release of the previous VM (the first on Ubuntu 14.01) has been very busy in terms of new developments and bug fixes on RADIUSdesk.

Thanks to a vibrant community the project is maturing at a fast pace and becoming more solid in terms of scalability and usability.

There was also a few reports of people using RADIUSdesk as a foundation platform while developing enhancements along with type specific implementations to serve their businesses.
This is very encouraging and a few of the goals of RADIUSdesk is definitely achieved when this happens.... read more

Read all about it here:

http://www.radiusdesk.com/user_guide/topup

With the release of the new Ubuntu 14.04 LTS behind us it is now indeed also time to get a new VM out.

The version convention of the VM also changed a bit giving the year as the base.
Subsequent releases during this year will increase in number.

In future we may also start charging a small fee for the pre-build VM images in order to contribute some funding to the further development of RADIUSdesk. The code still remains Open Source and downloadable.... read more

Where we are now

The initial tests with MESHdesk showed a product with huge potential.
As a prove of concept we created five entry points (VAPs) connected over the Batman-adv mesh to five captive portals each with their own login page and realms assigned to the captive portal.

We now have the building blocks available to create mesh networks for many scenarios.

What next

A quick list of things to tackle next:... read more

MESHdesk ready for first tests

For those who are eagerly waiting on the first usable version of MESHdesdesk the time of waiting has come to an end.

Check out this URL to if you want to test the application:
http://www.radiusdesk.com/user_guide/md_alpha_testing

Please remember it is still under active development and should only be considered in an Alpha stage.

It is however useful already in this stage. This blog entry was done through a mesh network from MESHdesk.... read more

After I enjoyed an interesting read on these two links, I'm convinced to start the migration from ExtJs 4.1 to ExtJs 4.2 with the Neptune theme using glyphs instead of icons:

http://sporcic.org/2012/10/state-of-extjs/
http://blog.credera.com/technology-insights/open-source-technology-insights/state-sencha-extjs-2013/

• Neptune theme
  ... read more

Suppose you....

Suppose you have a large store for which you have to deploy a WiFi network with the following requirements:

• A SSID to which the staff can connect which provides WPA2 Enterprise security and bridged to the Corporate Data VLAN.
• A SSID to which visitors can connect which is open and bridged to the Corporate Guest VLAN (There is already a working captive portal on this VLAN)
• The Point of Sales (POS) devices also have to connect to the WiFi network. They however only support WEP encryption. These devices are located only at a certain area in the store which means only selected Access Points need to provide this service. The POS devices are also on a separate VLAN... read more

Introduction

• Mesh networks can be a very convenient way to distribute a WiFi signal over a large geographical area.
• Would it not be nice to have an applet that is part of RADIUSdesk which will allow you to create and manage these mesh network with ease.

MESHdesk

... read more

Beta4 is here

This Beta includes support for central and dynamic Mikrotik Login pages as described here:

• http://www.radiusdesk.com/user_guide/mikrotik/rb751_advanced
• http://www.radiusdesk.com/developers_corner/mikrotik_jsonp

It also includes more easy lookup graphs.

Enjoy ... and don't forget to report any issues!

RADIUSdesk now includes usage graphs

A picture can tell a thousand words:

Usage graphs are available for the following:

• Permanent Users
• Devices
• Vouchers
• Realms
• NAS devices

It's been a while!

The Beta2 VM is out. This includes the following additional applets and improvements

• Voucher applet
• Access Provider support

The documentation on RADIUSdesk has also been increasing and maturing at a steady pace. Thanks to the RADIUSdesk community for all your help!

http://www.radiusdesk.com/
http://www.maomuffy.com/introduction-to-radiusdesk-with-rhelcentos-6-x-mini-course/

There are still a few features outstanding on RADIUSdesk which may prevent you from deploying it now.

The following items are taking priority in my coding:

• Vouchers

  • Single Vouchers
  • Batch vouchers
  • Documentation on 3rd Party Voucher generation through the API

• Dynamic login pages

  • Add a T&C ability per Dynamic Page definition. This will be a option that can be selected and the T&C can be defined by the person creating the Dynamic Page.

RADIUSdesk now has a dedicated project website.
It makes use of DocuWiki and is there to encourage the community to contribute documentation back.
DocuWiki has nice multi-language capabilities especially support for RTL languages.

http://www.radiusdesk.com/

After many hours of coding, there is now a Beta VM available in the Files section. This VM runs the following out of the box.

• FreeRADIUS
• Nginx
• MySQL
• CoovaChilli

Our offer

All these components together with RADIUSdesk offer you an easy way to manage:

• Guests on an open WiFi network through the CoovaChilli captive portal.
• Hook up the following type of devices to the FreeRADIUS server.
  • WPA-2 Enterprise connections from various Access Points.
  • Ethernet switches that use 802.11.
  • Ethernet switches that use MAC Address authentication
  • VPN servers
  • Network equipment that use RADIUS for AAA.... read more

What Admins want

Debug output viewer

Usually when you need to troubleshoot on FreeRADIUS it is essential to run the server in debug mode.
Fortunately with the Control Socket virtual server it is now possible to tell FreeRADIUS to drop into debug mode and then when you are done to go back to normal logging all without the need to stop the existing running process of FreeRADIUS.

The Control Socket even offers you the opportunity to zoom in on a certain NAS or a certain user while in debug mode.... read more

I plan to have the first release ready soon (hopefully still within April 2013).
This release should be usable by early adopters.

The following applets will be included

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RADIUS related

• Access Provider Manager
  • CRUD functionality for Access Providers.
  • Ability to create a hierarchy of Access Providers.
  • Fine grained rights per realm for each Access Provider.
  • Fine grained rights per allowed actions per Access Provider.
  • Ability to record the activity of an Access Provider and report on it.
  • Granular filter capabilities allows very specific queries.
  • Hidden columns which can be enabled for display.
  • Ability to add notes to each entry.
  • Export results to CSV.... read more

This will be a brainstorming post on the next steps that need to be completed on RADIUSdesk.

• In order to complete Permanent Users; Vouchers and BYOD Manager we need to complete the Profile Manager applet.
• All three of these applets depends on the availability of a profile selection.

Profile Manager

• Permanent Users; Vouchers and Devices will all have entries in the radcheck SQL table.
• Permanent Users (whose auth_type is sql) and Vouchers will have a Cleartext-Password := attribute entry.
• Devices will have a Rd-Auth-Type := Device entry.
• Permanent Users with an auth_type other than SQL will have an Rd-Auth-Type := <whatever auth_type=""> entry.</whatever>
• ALL three types of 'users' will have a radcheck entry of User-Profile := <profile user="">... read more</profile>

.... Still coding away on the 20%.....

Some work that has been completed / explored:

NAS Devices

• Auto refresh option on the refresh button.
• Removing the mask from the view port of the grid makes reloading appear transparent.
• Edit functionality is now partially completed
• Graphs will not be the optimal way of displaying availability of a NAS device.

I'll continue to work on the previous TODO list, trying to complete the items as time permits and update the Blog entry accordingly.

Outstanding work

The final 20% of things take 80% time to complete....

Here follows a list of outstanding items that has to be completed still / Applet:

Desktop

Item	Comment	Completed
Change password	User can change password	no

(i18n) Translation Manager

Item	Comment	Completed
Phrases Javascript side	Missed a few stray ones	yes
Phrases PHP side	Not much on the PHP side of things	yes
Fix bug on first item PHP side	does not edit	yes
Clean up code	Remove other languages	yes
Detect rtl languages	Added a flag to Languages table to specify rtl	yes
Document	Create documentation	yes
Code	Require easy export and import of translations	no... read more

Last week I've made some good progress on the NAS applet. I actually also realised a need for each applet window to have the following functionality where possible.

Toolbar

• Action area:
  • Refresh
  • Create
  • Delete
  • Update
• Document area
  • Notes management
  • CVS export
• Area specific to applet. This is where the buttons specific to the applet will reside.

Ability to handle large data sets

Although not all the data sets will ever become large; it will be best practice to keep a standard way to interact between the EXT Js grid and the back-end
This will include the following:... read more

How do you eat an elephant?

One byte at a time....

A list of what needs to be completed the week starting 1/7/2012 ending 1/12/2013.

Nas Devices

Item	Comment	Complete
Create	Prevent them from NOT selecting a realm	yes
Create	Add selected realms (CakePHP)	yes
View	Display assigned realms	yes
Tags	Applet with CRUD included under NAS devices menu	yes
View	Add and remove tags to NAS devices	yes
Create	Do the available connection type detection (OpenVPN, PPTP, Dynamic clients)	yes
Create	* Add OpenVPN functionality	yes
Create	Add pptp functionality	no
Create	Add dynamic clients functionality	yes
Monitor	* Heartbeat system for dynamic clients	no
Monitor	Monitor functionality including notification	no
Maps	* Google maps integration * leave until later	no
Filter	Advanced and quick filtering	yes
i18n	Make sure all the phrases are covered	no
Rights	Make sure the AP rights work as intended	no
Sorting	Allow for sorting on columns that allows for it	yes
Large data	Allow for large data sets by doing infinite scrolling	yes... read more

This is the first blog entry for Radius Desk

It will make use of CakePHP 2.X as a RESTfull interface

It will also make use of Extjs4 to create a Webtop (Desktop running in the browser)

---

We will start with a device and conquer approach. The following sections will discuss how to do this approach.

Token authentication

Description

RESTfull services are suppose to be stateless.

In order to do this in CakePHP while maintaining a secure API we will assign a token to each user and use this token as the username with basic authentication when doing RESTfull requests to CakePHP... read more