The littlest Kobo (aura h2o v1) and the mysterious hotspot

[jedix]

TL;DR, unblock/allow www.msftncsi.com

Recently I had updated my Kobo to gain a working download option in the web browser..which is key with calibre and the media share server. Upon updating, the browser started to work for downloading and everything was wonderful. Then I went on vacation.

When I came back, my Kobo would not use my WiFi. It would connect but would tell me it was a "hot spot" and pull up an empty login screen. If I cancelled, it would disconnect. If I pressed the X it would disconnect.
I rebooted several times then finally, reluctantly I tried the factory reset. which made matters worse. Because you have to use a pc or WiFi to set the damn thing up and I run Linux, I was now in a situation where I couldn't use the Kobo at all.

I finally tethered to my phone over the LTE connection which got me back up and running, but WiFi was stilled hosed! The Mac address was also wrong when WiFi wasn't connected - it showed a mac address from the wrong vendor. I got the right Mac address by connecting and leaving the empty login screen and checking my wifi routers active list, then got the IP from the dhcpd.leases file and tracked down what it was doing.

It checks for a valid network connection by using a msft URL (www.msftncsi.com) which is used by windows for checking network connectivity. My local DNS is a pi-hole to block ads which was recently updated and started to block the Microsoft URL.

It is sad to see such a poor design choice made to detect if a network connection is valid. The least it could do is check a URL under the control of the device manufacture. A better approach would be to allow a method to force using the WiFi connection even if the device believes it is a Hot Spot.

[davidfor]

What firmware version were you using before the update? The Kobo firmware has been using that www.msftncsi.com as part of the check for connectivity for several years. Before that, it used an Apple url. The change to www.msftncsi.com was at a time that Kobo added support for using hot spots.

As to what URL to use, there would be an argument for using a Kobo owned URL and server, but people would argue about what would happen if Kobo went under. Using this MS site makes a reasonable amount of sense as it is being used for the same purpose by at least one other operating system. And the resources (servers, bandwidth, etc) backing it make it unlikely that it will be unavailable.

And if your adblocking system has recently decided to block this URL, I would suggest you change to another. Deciding to block this this domain or URL as a source for ads would make me question if the people running the system knew what they were doing.

[jedix]

I was using the firmware that fixed the browser download issue - which I believe is from December 2017. This was most likely caused by an update to the host files on my ad blocker. As stated, I use a pi-hole for ad blocking. It pulls a bunch of restricted host files and the failure of the windows connectivity is stated on the FAQ:

https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/wiki/FAQs

Since I don't have a windows machine, I've never had the issue and Kobo doesn't mention it's reaching out to other peoples sites. This ad blocker does what a lot of ad blockers do and use host files to deny certain domains. It only takes one source to add that URL to cause the failure, so I think it's unfair to blame them.

I decided to write up my story since I couldn't find an answer to what was going on myself and I had to debug the issue after following the recommended steps by Kobo, including a factory reset... Hopefully others find my post helpful and perhaps a little entertaining.

The software doesn't set the right hardware address in the device information when the Microsoft URL is unreachable, which complicates debugging any connectivity issue. I would consider using someone else's URL fine, if it was stated somewhere in the debug steps that this was happening. The hardware address being incorrectly reported has to be considered a poor decision or bug.