Firmware 4.3.6 r2 GL-MT1300 captive portal gone?

[Falco]

Hi,
I noticed captive portal is apparently removed in the latest GL-MT1300 firmware, 4.3.6 release 2. Isn’t that one of the core features for a travel router? How should you then connect in a hotel, fair, etc?

See release notes below. Anyone installed it already on their GL-MT1300?

Release Notes
Cautions

Your settings can NOT be kept when upgrading to this version from 3.x. Please backup your settings first.
This version firmware does NOT include the following features:
    File Sharing
    Captive Portal
    RS485
This admin panel does NOT include the following languages:
    French
    Korean
    Russian
Limited by CPU performance and storage space, this version firmware also does NOT include Network Storage fature. (Allow users to install via plug-in after exroot)

OpenWrt Upgrade

Built based on OpenWrt 22.03.4 (AR300,AR750,AR750S,X300B,X750,XE300,MT300N-V2,MT1300,E750).
Built based on OpenWrt 21.02.2 (B1300).
Built based on OpenWrt 18.06 (SFT1200).

New Features

Added Scheduled Tasks feature.
Added Overview page to display system loading and set LED.
Added Multi-WAN feature, allowing users to switch between failover and load balancing modes.
Added Drop-in Gateway feature.

Optimization

Refactored and optimized System Architecture.
Redesigned interface UI.
Optimized sidebar structure.
Refactored and optimized repeater feature.
Refactored and optimized VPN features.
Refactored and optimized clients feature.
Optimized Cellular Settings feature.
Optimized DNS faeture.
Optimized MAC Clone feature, which has been renamed to MAC address.
Optimized IPv6 feature with the addition of Native mode.
Optimized Guest Wi-Fiwith the addition of SSID Visibility option.
Optimized DDNS Test.
Optimized connections with GoodCloud.

[bring.fringe18]

I could be wrong but I’m rather sure I read a post somewhere in this forum the ‘Captive Portal’ in this context is if your Beryl itself was to be a ‘hotspot’ as if it was a coffee-shop Wi-Fi AP.

I recall reading that feature was removed by GL because it didn’t make sense to have a primarily business oriented feature on a consumer travel router.

You can always make a backup of your settings, try it, reflash to a previous f/w version if you don’t like it:

HOW-TO: Script: List My OPKGs (to a file for backup)

Keywords: backup, opkg, plugins, list, howto, script, shell, luci, restore, ipk, tarball, conf Description List user’s (your) installed packages, writing them to a text file that can be used to reinstall the binaries of what a user manually installed. The resulting .list file will be use to opkg install to pull from the feeds. That is done with two commands in one execution. The GL GUI doesn’t feature a backup function. Creating & restoring a backup achieve (.tar.gz, aka tarball) of all your…

[yuxin.zou]

@Falco

I noticed captive portal is apparently removed in the latest GL-MT1300 firmware, 4.3.6 release 2. Isn’t that one of the core features for a travel router? How should you then connect in a hotel, fair, etc?

They are not one captive portal.
When connecting to a hotel hotspot, it is the hotel’s router that runs the captive portal service, and client devices (including the travel router) authenticate to the hotel’s router.
The captive portal that we have stopped maintaining is the captive portal service running on the travel router, which is used for authentication other than Wi-Fi passwords from client devices (your mobile computer) to the travel router.

The solution for connecting to hotel hotspots in older versions is still available:

Connect to a Hotspot with a Captive Portal - GL.iNet Router Docs 4

[Falco]

Many thanks @bring.fringe18 and @yuxin.zou !

I indeed only need the possibility to connect to a hotspot or portal. I do not need to host one myself. I did not even know this was an option in older firmware.

Thanks for the clarification, I’ll upgrade with a conscious mind now!

[elorimer]

Good riddance. A waste of space.

[daveb]

Hi, I just purchased an AX1800 running firmware version 4.2.3 but was disappointed to learn that this captive portal service has been dropped.

We will be running a low-power server at a remote & isolated event (with no Internet connection) and purchased this portable WiFi router to provide smart-phone access to the single web page running on our server. To be useful, accessing the site would need to be as simple as possible, so we planned to post a QR code that would allow a camp visitor to automatically connect to our WiFi network, and then the captive portal service to automatically direct them to our server’s web site. Questions:

1. Can I somehow re-enable the captive portal service, or install a plugin that would provide the service?

2. Is it possible for me to downgrade the firmware to a version that does support captive portal? (The firmware page for this product only appeared to list versions down to 4.0, no older. I tried installing that 4.0 version but still couldn’t find the Captive Portal service.)

3. Do you know of another way we can achieve what we were hoping to achieve with a single QR code scan?

[mangoman5000]

Thank you for this explanation. I was under the wrong impression too, until this post.

[elorimer]

Presumably the server will have an IP address of 192.168.8.xx, so could you just plug that into a QR generator and get the code?

[daveb]

@elorimer, thanks for the suggestion. What I’m actually hoping to do is to have a QR code that both connects you to the WiFi network AND then directs the user to a website. E.g., see this stackoverflow page:

How to generate QR code that connects phone to wifi AND opens website?

[elorimer]

I assume you can install nodogsplash with luci.

EDIT: or maybe not as it may have a conflict with newer kernel