Bug 7678

Comment 1 Andre Klapper 2010-01-05 22:30:38 UTC

(Definitely a nice idea, but I don't consider this a bug. Fixing severity.)

i'm voting for this reason, example: in finland the largest wifi network called
Spark/OpenSpark has thousands of access points, especially in university
cities.  one needs to login through a browser window. this means that atm, if
you've got the settings "switch to wlan when possible", you'll lose your
connection when Spark network is available. so, either you have to disable the
automatic switch to wlan network, or never use the Spark network (or delete it
from the list after each time you use it).

Sounds like a nice feature, but the obvious question is how to detect such a
captive portal?

i thought there was an app on the n810 that remembers login information so you
diffident need to login through the browser. but i use hot spos more and more
and this would be a good feature.

How to detect?
A simple test would be: curl --follow --silent http://www.google.com/ | grep
"<title>Google</title>" or preferably an URL of Maemo's.

But I guess Nokia knows how to do this properly, (tcp-ping on port 80 and 443?)
since it works flawlessly on N97.

Yes. With public no-WEP/WPA hot spots (I use Telia/Sonera, which covers most
parts of Sweden) that require logins (all universities that I know of, train
stations, airports, ...) I think this should be prioritized. Especially since
Nokia already have a solution to this particular problem for other handsets
(non-Maemo).

Comment 6 ext-jason.rudd@nokia.com 2010-03-12 10:23:21 UTC

On the N97 making a connection always opens the browser, unless you go to
settings|connections dialogue, in which case the same behavior is exhibited as
you describe here. 

You can replicate N97 behavior on Maemo by opening the browser to which will
initiate the connection dialog, once connected the login page will show.

The vast majority of WLAN users connect via a non hot spot APs and may not wish
to have their browser open.

However to make Maemo behave like the N97 simply create a web icon on the
desktop and use that to initiate the connection, rather than the connection
manager.

@ext-jason.rudd that wont work as a work around because the majority of the
time the phone will be connected over the 2G/3G network already, so the web
shortcut will just load fine over that.
I couldn't even get said prompt by disconnecting from the 2G/3G network (via
the main drop down menu.
I guess you'd have to switch to 'always ask', which is not as nice an
experience as what is possible on other devices.

Comment 8 ext-jason.rudd@nokia.com 2010-03-15 10:09:02 UTC

As the majority of users will not be using hotspot most of the time and may not
require a web page open upon connecting to an AP, changing to this method would
be for the minority of users at the cost of the majority.

Then, would you please help pointing out the relevant dbus signal that is sent
whenever a connection to the net is established. I'll be happy to write the 75
lines of python code needed to detect whether a HTTP request reaches it's final
destination, or if there's a login page redirecting the request (and if so,
fire up the browser, and perhaps vibrate and play a sound to alert the user of
the need of his/her input/user interaction).

@ext-jason.rudd: I disagree with you in how small the minority is. All
universities I've been to (several in Sweden, Brussels, Berlin), train stations
and airports, hotels and coffee shops (and McDonald's, ...) - all of them
provide "free" internet access, provided you look at a start page that displays
ads and a button saying "OK - I agreee with the rules now let me access the
net"

So, I disagree with how small the minority is that would appreciate this
feature, but I understand/believe that there probably are other bugs that are
more important. Plus, given a dbus signal (which should already be there), the
community (or at least I) will be able to add something that will at least fire
up a browser.

Comment 10 ext-jason.rudd@nokia.com 2010-03-15 11:22:29 UTC

@Fredrik Wendt: Wonderful! This is what open source is all about, you should
find all you need in libconic.

I'll read up on
http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide/Using_Connectivity_Components/Maemo_Connectivity

I wrote up a small hack that launches a browser whenever a connection is
established to a known IAP name (such as a WLAN SSID). Could easily be modified
to check contents of a specific URL and launch the browser only if the content
is different from what you expected - ie captured by a login page/portal.
http://wendt.se/blog/2010/04/25/python-maemo-wlan-browser/

Comment 13 Andre Klapper 2012-03-24 11:46:01 UTC

The Maemo 5 User Interface and Maemo 5 platform components (e.g. libraries)
used for the N900 are considered stable by Nokia and it seems that there are no
plans for official updates currently, hence nobody plans to work on this
enhancement/wishlist request. 
(And in case you feel like discussing this situation: Nokia Customer Care or
http://talk.maemo.org would be the place to do so as you will not reach Nokia
officials in this community bugtracker - though all of this is really no news.)

Reflecting this status by setting RESOLVED WONTFIX for this
enhancement/wishlist request (see
https://bugs.maemo.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status for status explanations).

There is a small chance for issues in those Maemo components that are open
source: Contributed patches could be included and made available in the Maemo 5
Community CSSU updates. 
The Maemo CSSU project is run by a small team of volunteers; see
http://wiki.maemo.org/CSSU for more information.
So in case that you can provide a patch that fixes the reported problem, please
feel encouraged to file a request under
https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Maemo%205%20Community%20SSU .
Please note: The Maemo CSSU project is not related in any way to Nokia.


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