access web page after wifi connection "auto magic"

SaintDanBert · 01-13-2012, 03:11 PM

I take my laptop "walk about" very often. Most public wifi opportunities demand that you "say grace" at some web page after the wifi connection, association, and authentication. Can someone help me sort out doing that dance auto-magically?

Here is what I want to happen:

find and activate a wifi connection (I happen to use wicd but would use network-manager if necessary
at the end of interface activation, launch and run an "interface active" script of my design
script would test (somehow) whether the network is really available or not (Maybe try to access CGI at some always-available web site.)
- if available, wrap-up and use it
- if not available, launch a browser to dance with the web page
eventually, I'd like to have a store of web page dances and smart enough script such that I only see a browser if this is a new network I'm visiting.

Does anything like this already exist?
Can anyone offer suggestions and guidance about how I might proceed?

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

SaintDanBert · 01-13-2012, 06:19 PM

I found this thread Run Script On Network Connection. It talks about doing things with /etc/network/interfaces entries. Does Ubuntu 10.04 or later still use that technique?

If not, what is the current technique used with these more recent editions of Ubuntu?

Is what I'm trying to do a udev or upstart "task" or "job" or something?

All of this is very confusing,
~~~ 0;-/ Dan