Arch Linux

gravitated_engineer

Member

Registered: 2021-08-12

Posts: 2

Connecting to an open public Wi-Fi network with a captive portal

After a year of not using Arch Linux - which was my first non-VM installation of Linux - and continuously distrohopping between Mint and Ubuntu, I've decided to settle with Arch for a second time. Installing dwm, Alacritty, and setting up the basic config files was fun. As I'm typing this in Starbucks, however, I stumble open the dreaded captive portal issue which was also seen on Ubuntu/Mint. Trying to connect to the coffee shop's public open internet connection does not work, whereas on Windows and Android it would redirect me to a simple page with an 'Agree & Continue' button. I use

nmcli

to conncet to other networks, which works for WPA stuff. I do have

netctl

and obviously

wpa_supplicant

installed on my machine. Is there any workaround to this problem?

EDIT: Attemtping to connect to the network using nmcli yields the following:

Error: Connection activation failed: (5) IP configuration could not be reserved (no available address, itmeout, etc.).

A timeout, the network manager is not even able to fetch the network's IP address! Also, I should've prefaced this, but my knowledge of networking is very basic (I do plan on learning more about it) .

Last edited by gravitated_engineer (2021-08-12 14:18:43)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,701

Re: Connecting to an open public Wi-Fi network with a captive portal

You can normally just navigate to whatever website in your browser and will be redirected accordingly

gravitated_engineer

Member

Registered: 2021-08-12

Posts: 2

Re: Connecting to an open public Wi-Fi network with a captive portal

You can normally just navigate to whatever website in your browser and will be redirected accordingly

See my recent edit. I cannot connect to any website (including non-HTTPS sites such as http://neverssl.com) and it just says that I'm not connected to the internet.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,701

Re: Connecting to an open public Wi-Fi network with a captive portal

That sounds more problematic, have you seen: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Networ … ve_portals ?

Also because you mention it and to make sure you aren't accidentally running too many services. The only networking service you've actively enabled via systemd is NetworkManager right? doing things with netctl/wifi-menu would be a conflicting operation.