Hello,
I'm currently travelling (in south-eastern Europe) with a netbook (Samsung NC 10) running CentOS 5.4 i386. I frequently try to access internet from bars or hotels (mostly via wireless).
Although it works pretty often, it happens quite regularly that in some hotels I cannot access internet from CentOS while it is possible from Windows. This is the case in the hotel where I am currently and I'd like to dig this further.
To be more precise: - in such cases, connecting to the wireless network itself works (using NetworkManager) - this is when I try to open a web page in Firefox that after a while I get a "page not found exception" - there is no problem on a Windows XP which is also installed on the computer - Fedora 12 has the same issue as CentOS - I suspect that in such cases the network is configured in a windows-specific / non-standard manner (but I had the pb often enough to justify addressing it): I installed Samba and started the winbind service, but it did not help (I know pretty much nothing about Windows networking but doing this already did some magic for me in other contexts...) - there are many places where I could connect with CentOS and wireless without any problem, and it also work in my wireless network back home, so my CentOS config is OK - interestingly, my google phone (G1 running Android 1.6) could access internet via the wireless network of the hotel where I am currently (while CentOS and Fedora can't)
Did anyone already face such an issue? Any idea how I could analyze further? Or what I could try?
This is not a big deal since I can always reboot to check internet, but all the software I use for my work are on CentOS, so it would be much more practical if I could reliably access internet from it as well.
Thanks in advance and cheers from the Black Sea under the snow...
Mathieu
From: Mathieu Baudier mbaudier@argeo.org
I'm currently travelling (in south-eastern Europe) with a netbook (Samsung NC 10) running CentOS 5.4 i386. I frequently try to access internet from bars or hotels (mostly via wireless). Although it works pretty often, it happens quite regularly that in some hotels I cannot access internet from CentOS while it is possible from Windows. This is the case in the hotel where I am currently and I'd like to dig this further.
While you cannot access websites, did you test with their IPs instead? Also try a traceroute.
JD
Mathieu Baudier wrote:
Hello,
I'm currently travelling (in south-eastern Europe) with a netbook (Samsung NC 10) running CentOS 5.4 i386. I frequently try to access internet from bars or hotels (mostly via wireless).
Although it works pretty often, it happens quite regularly that in some hotels I cannot access internet from CentOS while it is possible from Windows. This is the case in the hotel where I am currently and I'd like to dig this further.
To be more precise:
- in such cases, connecting to the wireless network itself works
(using NetworkManager)
- this is when I try to open a web page in Firefox that after a while
I get a "page not found exception"
- there is no problem on a Windows XP which is also installed on the computer
- Fedora 12 has the same issue as CentOS
- I suspect that in such cases the network is configured in a
windows-specific / non-standard manner (but I had the pb often enough to justify addressing it): I installed Samba and started the winbind service, but it did not help (I know pretty much nothing about Windows networking but doing this already did some magic for me in other contexts...)
- there are many places where I could connect with CentOS and wireless
without any problem, and it also work in my wireless network back home, so my CentOS config is OK
- interestingly, my google phone (G1 running Android 1.6) could access
internet via the wireless network of the hotel where I am currently (while CentOS and Fedora can't)
Did anyone already face such an issue? Any idea how I could analyze further? Or what I could try?
This is not a big deal since I can always reboot to check internet, but all the software I use for my work are on CentOS, so it would be much more practical if I could reliably access internet from it as well.
Check your dns settings after the network comes up. It sounds like networkmanager is not rewriting /etc/resolv.conf with the servers picked up from the local dhcp service. If you are running your own DNS server, it may be that some places block direct access to port 53.
Check your dns settings after the network comes up.
Agreed. Many hotels have a proxy that requires agreement to their TOS as a default first HTTP page. You won't even be able to resolve names on the outside until this happens. If you have a static DNS entry, you might not get the TOS page.
-Kane
Many thanks for all the quick and helpful answers!
Indeed it seems to be related to the DNS. On CentOS, after connecting to the wireless network, I hacked the /etc/resolv.conf generated by the NetworkManager and added Google Public DNS to it.
I could then access all websites via their domain names.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of other issues with this particular network (disconnecting all the time, also on windows), so I was not in a position to test a more stable configuration.
-
John Doe -
Kristopher Kane -
Les Mikesell -
Mathieu Baudier