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Linux/Squid/IPtables Cybercafe solution

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by steve cody

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I need to find a FREE solution for a non-profit Cybercafe. I'm setting up their Internet access with a Redhat 9 system and I need the appropriate software to manage user's Internet access.

I will give all the points to whoever can find software for me that handles the following:

Permit individual user's access to the Internet by login name
Track user's time and kill user's Internet connection when time is complete
Keep user data base that maintains user account information, login name,time remaining, other time data, and possible usage data.
Web administrative interface to control the access.
Must be free/open source software running on Redhat 9.

I think this is it. Please ask if you have additional questions, or if you think my requirements are unrealistic.

9 replies

by chris hardy

I'd be interested in this too, as i'm setting up a community project web cafe.. and if i can keep the costs very low, a grant we've applied for will keep us going for a long time.

Chris

by alveden

At the current stage, I do know that a few commercial software can do what you required. There are a combination of open source software that what you required, but most of them are still in the development stage, especially in the database and the real-time user management part. Please remove any white space in links provided.

1. Permit individual user's access to the Internet by login name.
Squid proxy, is capable of prompting user for id and password. It can be integrated with various authentication engine, such as NTLM, ldap, pam, etc.

2. Track user's time and kill user's Internet connection when time is complete.
You can try the software statman, currently that's the only software that I know that can track usage and terminate connections when the limit is reached. I do not know whether there are any continual development into this software.
http://www.tumgasa.ru/cyberos/statman/eng/statman.html
http://www.tumgasa.ru/cyberos/download/index.html

3. Keep user data base that maintains user account information, login name, time remaining, other time data, and possible usage data.
I have been keeping track of several development in this area, but the only development that actually have a software release is "whale", though u might need to write the front-end reporting yourself. Whale filter the squid log and convert it into a sql base log.
http://www.rvt.dds.nl/whale/whale.html

Below are some links that u might want to track, some provide the same function of converting squid log to sql, while some are trying to develop a plugin for squid to enable sql logging.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/squid2sql/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/squid-log/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/squidrh/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/squidsql/

by alveden

4. Web administrative interface to control the access.
Try "Webmin", it does more than squid configuration and control the acl list for squid. It also provide a web base interface for you to manage other services.
http://www.webmin.com/

You might also want to try "netuse", which provide real time update on usage by ip address
http://netuse.sourceforge.net/

By the way, you requirement is not an unrealistic one, infact it is so realistic that most development in this area went commercialand are making money out of it, under the guise of bandwidth or content management.

by steve cody

Thanks for the ideas. You put the most effort into your answer and it's helped me out a good bit.

by steve cody

Alveded, I'm going to check out the items you referred me to and see if they work out. I should be able to rate your answer soon.

by deepakvhegde

1.you can use Webmin for administration and
management of users and authentication.
2.Nagios for monitoring users access.
3.Calamaris web based monitoring for squid, which will monitor squid users according to their source IP, user name

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