On Cosmic, there is no automatic pop-up if a Wi-Fi network has a Captive Portal

[Till Kamppeter]

network-manager has a facility to automatically pop up a Captive Portal of a Wi-Fi network if required for access to the internet through that network. It does test accesses and on failure it triggers the pop-up.

Unfortunately, this does not work in Cosmic due to an upstream bug which is fixed in a later upstream version of network-manager (in Disco the pop-up works).

[Impact]

Users of Cosmic who use publicly available Wi-Fi networks (in hotels, stores, ...) with a Captive Portal (Access to an arbitrary web site leads to a page of the Wi-Fi owner to log in or accept the terms) do not get this log-in/accept-terms page presented automatically and if they do not do their first internet access via a web browser but by something else (e-mail, IRC, ...) the access simply does not work. This happens to all users.

[Test Case]

With Cosmic, select a publicly available (usually unencrypted) Wi-Fi network via the facilities of the desktop. The log-in/accept-terms page is not automatically popped up. Access an arbitrary web site with a browser and you see the page (instead of the site you have selected).

With the fix applied, the log-in/accept-terms page will pop-up in a window, as expected and so all users get aware of its presence and the requirement to answer it.

Note 1: If you have an access point where you can activate a Captive Portal, you can also test at home or in your office.

Note 2: To do more than one test with one and the same client and without methods like changing your MAC address, do not answer the Captive Portal. Then it would simple appear again the next time you select this network.

[Regression Potential]

Low, as the solution is an upstream-approved fix which makes part of the current version of network-manager.