Issue connecting to Campus Wifi
 

So I have never had any issues with the Ubuntu network manager before but today I started at a new school and for some reason I am unable to connect to any of their public wifi (un-secure) access points. It starts to connect but hangs when it is trying to obtain an IP address. I loaded up the nm-applet via terminal to see if it threw any sort f error message but none was given when it fails to connect. At the moment I am connected via my 3g device (which works alright) but I would much prefer to get on the wifi. I also have the "Wifi Radar" application installed and it fails to connect to the network(s) as well.

Any suggestions on things I get do to debug the issue/get it to work would be wonderful.

Thanks,
~Jeff

I have problems with Network Manager at certain locations that use repeaters or multiple access points with the same SSID. At one library in particular, I see similar behaviour to what you describe. I have a very simple wifi tool called "rutilt" installed on my laptop and it will connect at the same library OK, but it is necessary to unload NM first. You may have better luck with wifi-radar if you do the same. (How did you install wifi-radar? I believe if you use the ubuntu repositories installing wifi-radar forces NM to uninstall)

There is another network manager-like program named wicd that many people use. It is more of a replacement for Network Manager. I tried it about a year ago, it worked OK but not perfectly for me. Perhaps the latest version has improved.

Anyway, the exact commands to unload Network Manager are slightly different depending on what version you are running. In ubuntu 8.04 it could be unloaded with

In 9.04 (I don't remember what worked in 8.10) it is just
To restart NM run the same commands but replace "stop" with "start"

The Wifi manager I installed VIA apt-get (it does not require networkmanager to be removed)

If this is an issue with NM then and not just my laptop should I be filing a bug report then?

~Jeff

Welcome to the club if you do! There are already many bugs filed for connection failures under varying circumstances. If you do have a new issue or something to add to an existing bug report, by means do so.

It appears the issue is resolved (at least for me) in the latest network manager in Gnome 2.28 - upgrading to the Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 beta resolved the issue. Goooo progress :D

~Jeff