[NoCat] Docs for NoCatSplash

[Andrew Browning]

On 7/18/06, Emilio Recio <erecio at polywog.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just downloaded and installed NoCatSplash (splashd). I have some
> question regarding nocat.conf file. I tried to look in the man pages but
> there were somethings in the nocat.conf that weren't in the man pages.
>
> First off, what I want to do is simple authentication. I have an idea on
> how this is going to work (with some coding on my part php/Perl/etc.),
> and it would be nice if nocat had some provisions for it or docs on how
> it could be accomplished.
>
> 1) GatewayMode: it says it's not implemented other than Open. There's no
> mention of Gateway Mode in the man page. What is it for? What are the
> options?
>
> 2) Why have LoginTimeout if GatewayMode isn't implemented? If it's
> unrelated, then what exactly is it for?
>
> 3) AuthServiceAddr: what is this for and how does AuthService work? It's
> not at all discussed in the man page.
>
> Background:
>
> What I want to do is have a captive portal which asks for one or more
> bit of information (username/password). It sends this login info to a
> backend authentication mechanism (i.e.: PAM, Perl script, shell script,
> RADIUS, etc...) and based on the reply (or return code if it's a script)
> it lets the user through, or keeps the user in the captive portal.
>
> Thanks a lot in advance!
>
> -E
>

What you want is NoCatAuth. NoCatSplash is the C port of NoCatAuth,
but it doesn't have everything implemented. The reason that all those
unused directives appear in the nocat.conf file is because the
NoCatSplash conf file is the same as the NoCatAuth gateway conf file.
NoCatSplash currently only supports OPEN authentication; it really is
just a splash page, nothing more. If you want user authentication,
grab NoCatAuth. It provides for a gateway (like NoCatSplash does) AND
an authentication server, where you can use PAM, LDAP, DB, etc to
authenticate users.