How would one customize wifi-connect UI?

Product support balenaOS
35

Hi,

I have been reading back through the thread, and I can see that a number of things have been suggested & tried. Sorry that this is not as straightforward as it should be. First of all, could I clarify some things so that we can get a new start point, as there are a few points I think need clarifying:

  1. Are you running on macOS, Windows or Linux?

Line endings can get borked on Windows when using GIT and that can impact how Linux systems operate when using those files.

  1. Are you always running/testing by pushing the above compose/dockerfiles to a balenaCloud app?

It isn’t clear because you mentioned ...solution doesn’t seem to work if you’re running inside a container and using dbus so I just want to be 100% sure of the scenario here.

  1. Without modifying the wifi-connect source/UI it works 100% as expected?

This will help in terms of determining the delta between a working setup and a customised one.

Thanks, I hope we can all sort this one out for you :+1:

38

I seem to have FINALLY figured it out lol. Taking bits and pieces from suggestions would work sometimes but then not work with one another. I have now confirmed that it will work for multiple networks each time. I have tested 3 different networks now.

From the top:

Dockerfile compose

  wifi-connect:
    build: ./wifi-connect
    network_mode: "host"
    restart: always
    privileged: true
    labels:
      io.balena.features.dbus: '1'
      io.balena.features.firmware: '1'

DO NOT ADD ANYTHING EXTRA. No environment, no cap-add, nothing. Regardless of what the wifi-connect github says in its readme.

Dockerfile

FROM balenalib/%%BALENA_MACHINE_NAME%%-ubuntu:latest

ENV DBUS_SYSTEM_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/host/run/dbus/system_bus_socket

RUN sudo apt-get -y update && \
    sudo apt-get -y install dnsmasq wireless-tools && \
    sudo apt-get clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* /tmp/* /var/tmp/*

WORKDIR /usr/src/wifi-connect
RUN curl https://api.github.com/repos/balena-io/wifi-connect/releases/latest -s \
    | grep -hoP 'browser_download_url": "\K.*%%BALENA_ARCH%%\.tar\.gz' \
    | xargs -n1 curl -Ls \
    | tar -xvz -C /usr/src/wifi-connect/

WORKDIR /usr/src/wifi-connect/

COPY start.sh ./
COPY ui ui
CMD ./start.sh

I tried to use the raspberry pi image but that didn’t want to work. I suspect it doesn’t include everything for dbus? I even installed dbus as a install_package.

start.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

export DBUS_SYSTEM_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/host/run/dbus/system_bus_socket

sleep 10
while [[ true ]]; do
  # Choose a condition for running WiFi Connect according to your use case:

  # 1. Is there a default gateway?
  # ip route | grep default

  # 2. Is there Internet connectivity?
  # nmcli -t g | grep full

  # 3. Is there Internet connectivity via a google ping?
  #wget --spider http://google.com 2>&1

  # 4. Is there an active WiFi connection?
iwgetid -r

  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
      printf 'Skipping Wifi-Connect\n'
  else
      printf 'Starting Wifi-Connect\n'
      ./wifi-connect --ui-directory ui -a 600 -s Custom-SSID -o 80
  fi
  sleep 5
done

For some reason --ui ./ui was not going to work but --ui-directory ui does.
Also, be sure to use option 4 in the start.sh as shown above. The default options cause problems for me.

1 Like
40

Nice! Thanks for updating this thread for anybody running into this in the future :slight_smile: