Connecting to public wifi hotspots

[Tom H]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:


> OK - so now you know that DNS lookups are not working in Linux at this
> hotspot.
>
> - are there nameserver details in /etc/resolv.conf?
> - are the nameserver details (if any) coming from the hotspot?

Yes! That was my (possibly misexpressed) point earlier. If you don't
use the dns servers that the hotspot's dhcp server hands out, you can
FF, dig, ping to your heart's content, you won't get any result
(unless you're pinging a system on the hotspot's internal network)
without first getting to the hotspot's "home page" and accepting
whatever it wants you to accept. And getting to the hotspot's "home
page" necessitates using the hotspot's dns servers.


> - can you ping any of the nameservers?
> - can you get an answer back from any of the nameservers? (dig
> @nameserver ...)

"dig @hotspot-nameserver ..." will very likely be successful in spite
of FF failing.