packages/net/travelmate/files

Travelmate, a wlan connection manager for travel routers

Description

If you’re taking your laptop, tablet, or phone on an upcoming vacation or business trip, you'll want to connect with friends or complete work on the go. But many hotels don’t have a secure wireless network setup or limit you to using a single device at a time.

Travelmate lets you use a small "travel router" to connect all of your devices at once while having total control over your own personal wireless network.

Travelmate runs on OpenWrt, and provides an "uplink" to the hotel's wireless access point/hotspot. Travelmate then becomes the Access Point (AP) for you and your companions, providing secure access to the internet. See the Installation and Usage section below.

Travelmate manages all the network settings, firewall settings, connections to a hotel network, etc. and automatically (re)connnects to configured APs/hotspots as they become available.

Main Benefits and Features

• Easy setup from LuCI web interface with Interface Wizard and Wireless Station manager
• Display a QR code to transfer the wireless credentials to your mobile devices
• Fast uplink connections
• Supports routers with multiple radios in any order
• Supports all kinds of uplinks, including hidden and enterprise uplinks. (WEP-based uplinks are no longer supported)
• Continuously checks the existing uplink 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 a 'heartbeat' function to keep the uplink connection up and running
• Captive portal hook for auto-login configured via uci/LuCI. Use an external script for captive portal auto-logins (see example below)
• VPN hook supports 'wireguard' or 'openvpn' client setups to handle VPN (re)connections automatically
• Email hook via 'msmtp' sends notification e-mails after every successful uplink connect
• Proactively scan and switch to a higher priority uplink, replacing an existing connection
• Connection tracking logs 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
• (Optional) Generate a random unicast MAC address for each uplink connection
• NTP time sync before sending emails
• procd init and ntp-hotplug support
• Runtime information available via LuCI & via 'status' init command
• Log status and debug information to syslog
• STA interfaces operate in an "always off" mode, to make sure that the AP is always accessible

Prerequisites

• OpenWrt, tested/compatible with current stable 23.x and latest OpenWrt snapshot
• The luci-app-travelmate ensures these packages are present:
  • '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 and Usage

• Install OpenWrt on your router, and set it up to allow wireless connections. Be sure to set a strong password on the wireless channel(s) so that only you and your companions can use it.
• Decide which radio you'll use for the Travelmate uplink (radio0, radio1, etc):
  • 2.4GHz allows a longer (more distant) link; 5GHz provides a faster link
  • Travelmate works on all radios. But for better performance, configure the AP on a separate radio from the one you're planning to use as the uplink.
• Use LuCI web interface to install both travelmate and luci-app-travelmate
• Open the Travelmate LuCI application - Services -> Travelmate
• You must use the Travelmate Interface Wizard one time to configure the uplink, firewall and other network settings
• Use the Wireless Stations tab to add an uplink station
  • Scan the radio you chose for the uplink
  • Click Add Uplink... for the desired SSID. If there are multiples, choose the one with the largest Strength
  • You'll need to enter the credentials (password, etc)
  • You should be "on the air" - test by browsing the internet
• You may add additional uplinks (for different locations) by repeating the previous step
• 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_maxautoadd	5	limit the max. number of automatically added open uplinks. To disable this limitation set it to '0'
trm_captiveurl	http://detectportal.firefox.com	pre-configured provider URLs that will be used for connectivity- and captive portal checks
trm_useragent	Mozilla/5.0 ...	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_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
trm_stdvpnservice	-, not set	standard vpn service which will be automatically added to new STA profiles
trm_stdvpniface	-, not set	standard vpn interface which will be automatically added to new STA profiles

• 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, automatically set if the retry limit or the conn. expiry was reached
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
macaddr	-, not set	use a specified MAC address for the uplink
vpn	0, disabled	automatically handle VPN (re-) connections
vpnservice	-, not set	reference the already configured 'wireguard' or 'openvpn' client instance as vpn provider
vpniface	-, not set	the logical vpn interface, e.g. 'wg0' or 'tun0'

VPN client setup

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

• Wireguard client setup guide
• OpenVPN client setup guide

Please note: Make sure to uncheck the "Bring up on boot" option during vpn interface setup, so that netifd doesn't interfere with travelmate.
Also please prevent potential vpn protocol autostarts, e.g. add in newer openvpn uci configs an additional 'globals' section:

config globals 'globals'
        option autostart '0'

Once your vpn client connection setup is correct, you can reference to that config 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'. The package ships multiple ready to run auto-login scripts:
* 'wifionice.login' for ICE hotspots (DE) * '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 h+hotels (DE) * 'julianahoeve.login' for Julianahoeve beach resort (NL) * 'telekom.login' for telekom hotspots (DE) * 'vodafone.login' for vodafone hotspots (DE) * '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:~# /etc/init.d/travelmate status
::: travelmate runtime information
  + travelmate_status  : connected (net ok/51)
  + travelmate_version : 2.1.1
  + station_id         : radio0/403 Forbidden/00:0C:46:24:50:00
  + station_mac        : 94:83:C4:24:0E:4F
  + station_interfaces : trm_wwan, wg0
  + wpa_flags          : sae: ✔, owe: ✔, eap: ✔, suiteb192: ✔
  + run_flags          : captive: ✔, proactive: ✔, netcheck: ✘, autoadd: ✘, randomize: ✔
  + ext_hooks          : ntp: ✔, vpn: ✔, mail: ✘
  + last_run           : 2023.10.21-14:29:14
  + system             : GL.iNet GL-A1300, OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r24187-bb8fd41f9a

To debug travelmate runtime problems, please always enable the 'trm_debug' flag, restart Travelmate and check the system log afterwards (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
• remove the Travelmate package (opkg remove luci-app-travelmate, opkg remove travelmate)

Donations

You like this project - is there a way to donate? Generally speaking "No" - I have a well-paying full-time job and my OpenWrt projects are just a hobby of mine in my spare time.

If you still insist to donate some bucks ...

• I would be happy if you put your money in kind into other, social projects in your area, e.g. a children's hospice
• Let's meet and invite me for a coffee if you are in my area, the “Markgräfler Land” in southern Germany or in Switzerland (Basel)
• Send your money to my PayPal account and I will collect your donations over the year to support various social projects in my area

No matter what you decide - thank you very much for your support!

Have fun!
Dirk