pilon

Pilon, easy wifi hotspot for Raspberry Pi, pay with bitcoin

Required

• Raspberry Pi
• Wifi dongle [1]
• SD card
• Computer to load pilon image file to SD
• Computer to configure pilon

If you would like to build it from scratch, start from Raspbian.

[1] Your wifi dongle has to have some sort of master mode. Some call it accesspoint infrastructure mode, host mode, hostap mode, ...

Setup from image

Download image from https://www.dropbox.com/s/c731j2x433pqq1r/pilon.7z

Login: pi

Password: pilon

This image is not perfect:

1. Without thinking too much, I expanded the partition size to 8Gb.
2. The iptables config is not included.

Setup from scratch

Start from Raspbian image. You can find it here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

Find your pi in the local network and connect with ssh:

Login: pi

Password: raspberry

Get pilon

Get the files from github, clone them into /home/pi

git clone https://github.com/thgh/pilon.git /home/pi/lon

Make these folders available to the webserver

sudo chmod -R 774 /home/pi/lon/etc/*
sudo chgrp -R www-data /home/pi/lon/etc /home/pi/lon/www

Install webserver

Install php and nginx which will serve the captive portal

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php5-fpm php5-gmp nginx

Edit some settings

sudo sed -i 's/worker_processes 4/worker_processes 1/g' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
sudo sed -i 's/application\/octet-stream/text\/html/g' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
sudo sed -i 's/var\/log\/nginx\/access.log/home\/pi\/log\/nginx-access.log/g' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
sudo sed -i 's/var\/log\/nginx\/error.log/home\/pi\/log\/nginx-error.log/g' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Set up a new server

# Clear default server
sudo sh -c 'echo "" > /etc/nginx/sites-available/default'
# Edit the new one
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default 

Insert this:

##
# Pilon captive portal server
##
server {
  listen 80;
  server_name localhost;

  root /home/pi/lon/www;
  index index.html;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /redirect.php;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_index /redirect.php;
    fastcgi_param PHP_VALUE "include_path=/home/pi/lon/etc";
    include fastcgi_params;
  }
}

Give it a final touch with:

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx reload

Test this setup by visiting the ip address of your pi.

Use ifconfig if you're not sure what's your ip.

Wifi dongle as bridge

Follow this guide to get your wifi dongle working and bridging:

http://www.daveconroy.com/turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-wifi-hotspot-with-edimax-nano-usb-ew-7811un-rtl8188cus-chipset/

I suggest to skip the first part (except for passwd) and start from installing hostapd and bridge-utils

Redirect to captive portal

These settings should work:

# Start from scratch
iptables -F
iptables -X
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t nat -X
iptables -t mangle -F
iptables -t mangle -X
iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT

# Redirect to nginx server
iptables -t mangle -N internet
iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80:50000 -j internet
iptables -t mangle -A internet -j MARK --set-mark 99
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m mark --mark 99 -j DNAT --to-destination $(ifconfig eth0 | grep "inet addr" | awk -F: '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}'):80

# Whitelisting
# Coinbase
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d coinbase.com --dport 80 -j RETURN
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d coinbase.com --dport 443 -j RETURN
# blockchain.info
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d blockchain.info --dport 80 -j RETURN
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d blockchain.info --dport 443 -j RETURN
# bitcoin.org
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d bitcoin.org --dport 80 -j RETURN
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d bitcoin.org --dport 443 -j RETURN
# fonts
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d fonts.googleapis.com --dport 80 -j RETURN
iptables -I internet 1 -t mangle -p tcp -d fonts.googleapis.com --dport 443 -j RETURN

Aaaaaaaaand it's done.