hotel network -- connected, but no dns, no login page, completely unusable

[birnam]

I ripped XP off of my wife's netbook (Aspire One) as soon as we got home and put Ubuntu on it (Jaunty). Now I'm looking like the bad guy, and Linux is taking the rap for my wife being unable to connect to the network from her hotel where she's staying at for a few days.

Can anybody help return Linux to her good graces?

We've had this problem at every hotel network we've been to -- and in fact, both wireless and wired connections yield the same results. Wireless works perfectly at home. My sister in law has the same netbook with XP still on it, and it was able to connect perfectly to a wireless hotspot where we were seeing the same issue with my wife's Ubuntu netbook.

Network manager says it's "connected" with both wired and wireless, but trying to access a webpage in firefox or pinging by domain name, like "ping google.com", returns a "server not found" message.

I had her look in /etc/resolv.conf and it's definitely been updated with the hotel's settings, so DHCP seems to be working, including listing a couple of nameserver IPs. I had her try pinging one of them - by IP - and it was successful. It looks like she's just unable to get any DNS queries returned.

I understand that hotels will often interject a login page when you try and connect to anything, but she's not getting that at all.

Is there a way to trigger the login page manually and see if providing the username/password she has will open up the DNS server? Or maybe providing an open DNS server manually in resolv.conf that could bypass the need for the hotels DNS at all? (not sure I'd be able to override the dhcp info though)

[nixscripter]

A quick hotel checklist:

1. iwconfig for wireless, ifconfig for wired. Looks like you did that.

2. To get an IP, run

sudo dhclient

Looks like you have that, too.

3. If you have one, check your routes with the

route

command.

4. Check your DNS information in /etc/resolv.conf, which should have been generated by command 2 (or automatic DHCP). If it's updated, is there a gateway entry? Is that in the route output?

5. There are problems with some DNS servers and ipv6. You might want to blacklist the ipv6 kernel module in /etc/modprobe.d/ if you don't have a specific use for it.

Hope this helps.

[dmizer]

The hotel's login page is usually controlled by some kind of redirect. If Firefox has plugins like noscript and adblock or others which prevent the redirect from happening, then you'll see this problem.

[birnam]

Many thanks for the replies! nixscripter, I think your IPv6 suggestion has potential, but it doesn't look like there's an easy way to disabled IPv6 in Jaunty (it's apparently not a module but directly in the kernel). Not something I can explain to a linux lightweight over the phone, at least. We tried disabling IPv6 in the firefox config, but it didn't help. I don't think it was low-level enough to fix the problem.

dmizer, I don't think my wife has installed any extensions. She's a very casual computer user (i.e. opposite of power user) and tends not to customize much, if at all. Do you know how this works with other utilities? She's can't ping a domain name either -- does entering the login/password that [is supposed to] pops up suddenly allow the DNS to start working properly, or should the DNS work regardless?

I'm still open for my suggestions since we'll be running into this again next time we're trying to access a hotspot like this, but she's heading back home tomorrow and we won't have time to test anything else right now.

Unless -- is there any way to emulate the hotel dns-hijack-login-page setup on a home network? If I could emulate the problem I would love to get this working *before* we're back at a hotel....

Sigh, and my wife sent a frustrated tweet earlier that used "linux" and "hate" in the same sentence. I almost cried.

[dmizer]

Well, It's been a while since I had to deal with this, but I know it's possible. Also, not all hotels have the mandatory login redirect page. It could simply be that there was a legitimate DNS problem, and something like OpenDNS could have solved the problem. It's also possible that (if you're using OpenDNS) that OpenDNS could have been preventing the login page from appearing.

Usually with the mandatory login page, you won't get access to the internet until you visit the page. It's possible that you could have asked the hotel staff exactly what the login page URL was and manually browse to it. Sometimes you can even find the URL written in some of the howto documentation in the room itself.

Basically what's happening is that when you log in, your MAC is added to the router, and that allows you to browse, so even if you use alternative DNS servers, you won't be able to access the internet unless you log in.

In any case, it's understandable that your wife is frustrated and uses words like "hate". After all, that word is the same reason many people cite for wanting to get away from Windows. I suggest that you avoid trying to defend Linux at this point; especially by trying to highlight Linux advantages as that's likely to make the situation worse. Recognizing that there was a problem and showing that you're trying to work toward a fix will go much farther with her.

[marmaj]

I have just ran into the same problem as described by the OP.

I did some searches, and it seems that hotel's DHCP process is two-staged. Stage one results in the DHCP issuing a "limited use" IP address which is good for accessing some local services (i.e. the login page in your browser) but is not good for anything "external" to this network. After the login step is satisfied, the second stage DHCP process kicks in issuing a "full use" IP address which is good for going outside of the gateway.

There seems to be a RFC regarding this behavior: 3203.

I was not able to find out how to overcome the problem with UBUNTU, but I will have to, since I will be stuck in a hotel for two months starting in January 2010.

WIN-XP seems to negotiate this hurdle fine with MSIE and/or FIREFOX using stock DHCP. UBUNTU seems to have problems with at least FIREFOX.

I am sure that there is an answer out there, since hotels and Linux laptops seem to be popular enough.

I will continue searching for an answer, and I will post it as soon as I find it, but if any of you beats me to it, please share...

-mm-

[marmaj]

Update!

Since my previous post I have moved to another hotel just across the street from the old one, and BAM - I can connect just fine on the UBUNTU laptop of mine using WI-FI.

Marriott - BAD
Staybridge - GOOD

Seems the hospitality suite software they use at Staybridge does not care whether the system is Wintendo or Linux. Good stuff...

-mm-

[maimeno]

I got the same problem with redirected log-in page (in my apartment). Trying to remove *.local from blocked list in Firefox but still not success.

Any solution on this yet?

NOte: using another Linux i.e. Puppy/TinyCore is fine to open redirected log-in page but I still prefer Ubuntu GUI.