Re: Connecting to hotel wireless networks

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 16:22 +0100, Brian Morrison wrote:
> Tambet Ingo wrote:
> > On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 5:21 PM, Michael Duvall <michael duvall ccur com> wrote:
> >> On a recent business trip I was unable to connect to two different hotel
> >> wireless networks, yet I had no problem with getting an IP from a McDonalds
> >> restaurant or at the Fort Worth airport.  As for the hotels, my co-worker
> >> that has a Windows laptop had no problem with either hotel.  I tried to
> >> troubleshoot the problem, but had no success.  My guess is that the hotel
> >> wireless networks were poorly configured, however if a Windows laptop
> >> connected I think that there must be a way to get a Linux laptop to work.
> >> Of course, when one tries to get tech support at hotels, the customer
> >> service reps eyes glass over when they find out that I'm running Linux....
> >> Go figure.
> >>
> >> I am running 2.6.24.7-92.fc8 with the latest updates as of May 16, 2008.
> >> Below is the captured output from the NetworkManager.  Any and all
> >> suggestions/recommendations will be greatly appreciated.
> > 
> > For this specific log I can not suggest anything, it looks like the
> > DHCP server just never replied. But I just committed a little
> > workaround for poorly configured networks often found in hotels and
> > airports: The default gateway returned by DHCP server is not in the
> > same subnet as the assigned IP, so adding the default route fails. The
> > workaround for it is to first add a direct route to the gateway
> > machine and then the default route.
> 
> I'm not certain, but I've found that if the wmaster0 device is ever
> mentioned instead of wlan0 then things are probably not going to work, I
> don't know the reason for this.
> 
> Can anyone explain what's happening when this pseudo-device gets in on
> the act?

It never should.  It shouldn't ever get the property of net.80211 in
HAL, and thus should never be seen by NetworkManager as a usable wifi
device, because it's really not.  It'll let you _create_ usable wifi
devices, but itself is not a wifi device that you can use for anything
(except for packet capture of course).

Dan