Connecting to public wifi hotspots

[Avi Greenbury]

JD wrote:
> 
> Well, apparently, you are not aware of the entire thread.

No, I think you are the one who is ignoring this thread.

> The problem I presented is that Using Ubuntu and firefox,
> I am unable to connect with open hotspots because most
> of these hotspots require that you open the browser, which
> automagically to the hotspat's start page (I do nto not know how, perhaps via a
> directive from the hotspot's server),
>  where you must agree to their terms and conditions, before
> you are allowed to go beyond their start web page.

To clarify, then, does everything but this combination of Firefox and
Ubuntu work? Do other apps in Ubuntu work as expected, but Firefox
doesn't? If so, then we've all completely misunderstood; what does
work?

If that is not the case, and in general nothing in Ubuntu is behaving
as expected here, then we may as well use tools designed for testing
for this sort of problem rather than insist upon doing all our testing
inside of Firefox.

> So my problem has nothing to do with getting to me browser's
> default home page.

It has *everything* to do with getting to your browser's home page
because that is what your browser is trying to do and failing in the
process, and you want to know why it's failing.

When it tries to get to your home page it is redirected by some
mechanism to a captive portal which is where you will agree to some
terms and suchlike. This is failing, and the first step to discerning
what is going wrong is to find out what it is that is failing, and to
do that we need to see what mechanism the network is using to effect
the redirect to the captive portal. To do that, we need to replicate
what Firefox will do when it tries to get to your home page, see what
comes back, and deduce what Firefox is likely to do in response - it
will probably, for example, follow any HTTP redirects, so we should do
that, too, and find out what happens. 

> It has everything to do with why the ubutu firefox doe snot behave
> as it behaves on windows when it comes to connecting through hotspots.
> I hope this make it clear to everyone :)

I don't understand why you are so adamant that the problem is in
Firefox - you've not intimated that other browsers are unaffected.
Either way, we'll not be able to help you if you refuse to do any
testing other than opening Firefox and seeing that it doesn't work.
Firefox itself is not a good tool for this job (as you've noticed),
but we should then work out why other things are working and what may
be different about Firefox to make it not work.

-- 
Avi