Ubuntu GNOME does not check for and provide Wi-Fi captive portal login

[Saurav Sengupta]

GNOME had introduced automatic login prompt for Wi-Fi captive portals (Wi-Fi access points which require Web-based login, such as those found in public places) quite a while ago. However, this functionality is still unavailable in Ubuntu GNOME. I don't know if I'm missing a package or a configuration option, but it's not available in default Ubuntu GNOME installations up to and including Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 (Zesty) Alpha 2. Enabling this function by default would be very helpful.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Thank you for taking to report this bug and help make Ubuntu better.

I am triaging this as Wishlist since it's new functionality.

Does this work for you?

https://www.lguruprasad.in/blog/2015/07/21/enabling-captive-portal-detection-in-gnome-3-14-on-debian-jessie/

I'm interested in getting this implemented by default for Ubuntu GNOME but I need to try to figure out if there are reasons why it wasn't enabled earlier.

[Saurav Sengupta (sauravsengupta)]

Thanks for the link. I have done some basic testing and it's working all right. The author of the post you've linked to says that it is not enabled by default in Debian because the request to check for connectivity may be tracked and this may be a privacy concern. However, it's enabled by default in Fedora and may also be so in other (at least non-Debian) distributions. There is, of course, the point that GNOME Network Manager is also used in Ubuntu Unity and Xubuntu, and I don't know whether this would cause any difference there.

The only minor irritation is, as mentioned in the blog article, that the login window comes up after the given timeout, but obtrudes upon the foreground, cutting off the current task. It would be OK if it were held in the background and the user notified by the standard notification system that the window was ready. In Fedora, I seem to remember that the window did not appear at all after the timeout but the NM icon changed to a question mark. However, that creates a problem because the login window cannot be accessed manually. But I may be wrong. Fedora has the configuration file in /usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/ and I rooted around both there and in /etc/NetworkManager/ but could not figure out anything else that could be relevant. Anyway, the window appearing in the foreground is still a minor inconvenience, given the overall usefulness of having the captive portal login facility and the fact that the network does not usually keep getting logged out of.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Thanks for the feedback.

My current plan is for that config snippet to be contained in its own package so anyone can enable or disable the feature by installing or uninstalling the package. I believe the browser popup is only implemented in GNOME Shell, but even without that, the connectivity check may be useful to other desktops. I think it would be useful to have this installed by default for Ubuntu GNOME at least.

I'll need to do more testing (I haven't tried it myself yet!) and I may need to get a Feature Freeze Exception for this for Ubuntu GNOME 17.04. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZestyZapus/ReleaseSchedule

[Saurav Sengupta (sauravsengupta)]

Putting it in its own package seems to be a good idea. That way, even other
Ubuntu(-based) distros could opt out of it by not having it installed by
default. It certainly should be enabled by default on Ubuntu GNOME though.

On 16 Feb 2017 9:21 pm, "Jeremy Bicha" <email address hidden> wrote:

> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> My current plan is for that config snippet to be contained in its own
> package so anyone can enable or disable the feature by installing or
> uninstalling the package. I believe the browser popup is only
> implemented in GNOME Shell, but even without that, the connectivity
> check may be useful to other desktops. I think it would be useful to
> have this installed by default for Ubuntu GNOME at least.
>
> I'll need to do more testing (I haven't tried it myself yet!) and I may
> need to get a Feature Freeze Exception for this for Ubuntu GNOME 17.04.
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZestyZapus/ReleaseSchedule
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1664399
>
> Title:
> Ubuntu GNOME does not check for and provide Wi-Fi captive portal login
>
> Status in Ubuntu GNOME:
> Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> GNOME had introduced automatic login prompt for Wi-Fi captive portals
> (Wi-Fi access points which require Web-based login, such as those
> found in public places) quite a while ago. However, this functionality
> is still unavailable in Ubuntu GNOME. I don't know if I'm missing a
> package or a configuration option, but it's not available in default
> Ubuntu GNOME installations up to and including Ubuntu GNOME 17.04
> (Zesty) Alpha 2. Enabling this function by default would be very
> helpful.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-gnome/+bug/1664399/+subscriptions
>

[Saurav Sengupta (sauravsengupta)]

I tried putting the config snippet in place on a new installation of Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 BEFORE booting into the installation for the first time. I also upgraded it to GNOME 3.22 first (from the gnome3-staging PPA). Then, when I logged in for the first time and tried connecting to a captive portal network from the GNOME initial setup wizard, it showed a tick mark but the NM icon remained a question mark and the Internet was inaccessible from the system until I turned Wi-Fi off and then on. I experienced a similar problem even when installing the snippet on an existing installation (as well as on a fresh one), after the second reboot or so - the icon would remain a question mark and the system did not connect until I rebooted.

Next I tried the following:-
 * Commented out the interval and response lines in the config file AND,
 * Commented out dns=dnsmasq in /etc/NetworkManager.conf

The interval and response are set to default values if missing. This is working correctly, without the problems mentioned above, on a fresh installation. I don't know which of the two makes it work, but there are a further two points:-
 * The changelog for network-manager 1.2.4-0ubuntu1 includes the following: "Switch back to dns=dnsmasq for Ubuntu 16.10. We still don't have a DNS plugin for resolved, and don't want to break domain-specific DNS servers for the final release." I don't know what exactly is impacted by disabling dnsmasq.
 * Maybe the response value in the config file needs to be enclosed in (double) quotation marks? I don't know the syntax for values with spaces in them.

Since it's working now, I'm a bit wary of experimenting with these two settings.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Saurav, Ubuntu 17.04 Beta is currently using systemd-resolved so the dns=dnsmasq line has been removed.

I'll try without the interval and response lines.

[Saurav Sengupta (sauravsengupta)]

Sorry, that should have been /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf.

[Saurav Sengupta (sauravsengupta)]

The default response would only work as long as the page given in the uri (http://network-test.debian.org/nm), returns the default response, of course ("NetworkManager is online", as given in the Network Manager specification).

[Saurav Sengupta (sauravsengupta)]

By the way, I think network-manager should be the correct affected project for this, or at least added to the list, and optionally the title can be changed to indicate the missing connectivity check. I have seen that the KDE Plasma Network Manager applet (or plasmoid) can also reflect the connectivity state, so the benefit is cross-desktop.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Saurav, thanks for the help. I tested this today and it worked pretty well (except I have been having trouble with systemd-resolved (LP: #1666021) )

I have moved discussion of this feature over to LP: #997200 and the ubuntu-devel list. I'll keep this bug open for having ubuntu-gnome-desktop recommend the new package if that's approved.

[Saurav Sengupta (sauravsengupta)]

Thanks. I have marked bug #997200 as affecting me; confirmed for network-manager (Ubuntu).

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I would like to enable this, but I'm not sure it will be possible until 17.10.

It would be helpful if we had a toggle switch in Settings>Privacy to disable this feature (but it would be enabled by default).