HandyCafe Docs
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Installing the Gateway

Everything here happens once, when the cafe first gets a gateway. Read Gateway first if you have not: it says what the gateway is and where it sits.

Step 1: Pick the PC

The gateway needs one Windows PC that stays on while the cafe is open. You have two choices, and both are normal.

The same PC that runs HandyCafe Server. Nothing extra to buy or find room for, one machine to look after. The cost is that restarting Server's PC takes the cafe's internet down with it, and that PC needs a second network card.

A separate PC. The cafe's internet stops depending on the Server PC: you can restart Server, update it, or have it break, and everyone stays online. An old office PC is enough. This is the better choice for a cafe that can spare a machine.

Either way, the gateway is managed from HandyCafe Server. You do not sit at the gateway PC after it is set up.

Step 2: Put two network cards in it

This is the one requirement with no way around it. The gateway takes the internet in through one card and hands it to the cafe through the other. A PC with a single card cannot do that.

Most PCs have one card on the motherboard, so you are adding a second:

  • A PCIe network card if the PC has a free slot. The cheapest option and the one that stays put.
  • A USB Ethernet adapter if it does not. It works, and it is far less trouble than moving the cafe onto a different PC later.

Wi-Fi does not count as the cafe-facing card. The cafe side has to carry every station at once.

Step 3: Run the cables

Find the cable that goes from your modem to the cafe switch today. That one cable becomes two.

  1. Modem, into the gateway PC's first card.
  2. Gateway PC's second card, into the cafe switch.

Everything else stays where it is. The stations do not move, the switch does not move, the modem does not move.

If the cafe has more than one internet line, plug the first one in now and add the rest later from the WAN tab. See Internet lines.

Step 4: Install the software

In HandyCafe Server, open Settings > Gateway.

On this same PC

Press Install on this PC. The Server asks once whether you are sure, because that PC becomes the router for the whole cafe. Say yes, let Windows raise its permission prompt once, and the rest runs on its own. It takes a couple of minutes.

On a different PC

Press Download for another PC. When it finishes, the file's location is shown under the button. Copy that file onto a USB stick, take it to the gateway PC and run it there. There is nothing to type during the install.

When it finishes

The installer opens two pages in the browser on the gateway PC: this guide in the language Windows uses and the gateway's own page. Nothing on the network has changed yet. The gateway does not touch the network cards until you choose them in Step 6.

Step 5: Sign in on the gateway's page

The gateway's page is at https://127.0.0.1:8443/ on the gateway PC. The icon in the notification area opens it too.

The browser warns about the certificate first. That is expected. The certificate is one the gateway signed itself, because nothing outside that machine can vouch for a PC on your own network. Open the browser's details or advanced option on the warning page and choose to continue to the site.

Sign in with the starting details:

Username Password
admin handycafe

These are the same on every new gateway and are printed here on purpose: they are not a secret, they are a starting point. The page then asks you to set your own username and password before anything else. HandyCafe Server signs in with the same details from another PC. Anyone who knows the starting password could do the same.

If the password was changed before, sign in with that one.

Step 6: Tell it which card is which

Open the Network setup tab. It lists the PC's network cards with their addresses and whether a cable is plugged in. It also suggests which one faces the modem and which one faces the cafe.

  • Card facing the internet: the card the modem's cable goes into.
  • Card facing the cafe: the card the cafe switch's cable goes into.

Look at the suggestion before you accept it. If the two cards are the same model, the names alone will not tell them apart, and unplugging one for a moment will: the one you unplug shows as not connected.

Press Apply.

The question it asks afterwards

Changing which card faces where rewires that PC's networking. If the choice was wrong, the cafe loses its internet and nobody can reach the gateway to undo it.

So the gateway does not simply apply the change. It applies it, then asks whether things still work, and it puts the old settings back by itself if nobody answers within a minute.

Before you answer Yes, keep these settings, check two things: that this PC still reaches the internet, and that one cafe PC does too. If either one does not, answer No, put the old ones back, or answer nothing at all and let the minute run out.

The Status tab then shows both cards, the gateway's address on the cafe network (192.168.10.1 on a fresh install) and whether cafe PCs are getting their addresses. If something is wrong there, the tab says what and what to do.

Step 7: Connect HandyCafe Server

In HandyCafe Server, open Settings > Gateway and fill in:

  • Gateway address: the gateway's address on the cafe network, 192.168.10.1 on a fresh install. If the gateway runs on the Server PC itself, the same address works.
  • Port: 8443.
  • Username and Password: the ones you signed in with in Step 5.

Press Test connection, then Connect. The Server remembers the gateway's certificate and refuses to connect if it ever changes.

Step 8: Check it

  • The Internet page appears in HandyCafe Server's main menu, and its Overview tab shows the line as up.
  • A station on the cafe network opens a web page.
  • Settings > Gateway shows the gateway as connected.

That is the install finished. Everything after this is day to day work and lives on the Internet page.

The gateway's own page

The page you signed in to in Step 5 stays useful after the install. It is a way in when HandyCafe Server cannot start or cannot reach the gateway: see the status, run the network setup again, read the log, download a diagnostics file for support, restart the gateway, change the password. Everything else stays in HandyCafe Server.

The page is served to the gateway PC only. Another machine on your network gets nothing, not even a sign-in form.

If the password is lost

On the gateway PC, open a Command Prompt as administrator and run these three commands, one after the other:

net stop HandyCafeGateway /y
"C:\Program Files\HandyCafe\Gateway\gatewayd.exe" --config "C:\Program Files\HandyCafe\Gateway\gatewayd.toml" reset-admin-password
net start HandyCafeGateway

The account goes back to admin / handycafe. Sign in with it and set your own password again, on the gateway's page and in Settings > Gateway. While the gateway is stopped, the cafe has no internet. There is no way to do this over the network, and that is deliberate.

Moving the gateway to another PC

Install it on the new PC and connect Server to the new address. Then uninstall it from the old one, or at least stop its service: two gateways handing out addresses on the same network will fight over it.