Bug 249420

Description of problem:
wifi wireless default/onfirstboot configuration may connect to wrong network.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Upon startup after initial install, and every reboot thereafter until changed.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install F7 on laptop containing recognized wifi device
2. After install, boot laptop

  
Actual results:
After first boot, and every boot thereafter, F7 enables laptop's ethernet
connector and its wifi adapter.  The wifi adapter automatically connects (in
"manager" mode) to the first nonsecure network it discovers, and configures
thereafter to connect to that network.  In my case, that is a network run by one
of my neighbors, not mine (which is "secure").  The computer immediately began
using the resources it discovered this way.

Expected results:
At a minimum, F7 should not enable the wifi adaptor by default.
At a maximum, F7 should offer to configure the wifi adaptor either during
install or when it is first used.

Compare to Windows Vista, which at least asks which network to connect to before
 enabling the wireless adaptor and doing so.

Additional info:
All available updates to FC7 were applied after the problem was noted.  No
change in behavior after updates applied (as expected).

My computer is an HP dv9033cl, which has integrated wireless and gigabit
ethernet controllers, both of which are recognized by FC7.

The wireless card was auto-configured by FC7 as the default route to the
internet.  I failed to notice that the wireless card was enabled, and configured
the ethernet adapter at a local address (192.168.7.xxx).  Since I had manually
configured for routing through my ethernet adapter to the internet via my
gateway host on (192.168.0.xxx), no packets apparently made it onto the
internet, because my neighbor's wifi had configured my wireless via dhcp at
address (192.168.1.xxx), and designated the wireless network as the default
route.  Therefore, packets destined for my ethernet gateway machine at
(192.168.0.xxx) were routed onto the 192.168.1.xxx (wifi) network.  When I
removed the routing data, I was able to access the internet via my neighbor's
box.  Had I not blindly configured the ethernet adapter during firstboot, I
would have been able to use my neighbor's network "out of the box".

Additionally, disabling the wifi network did not remove its route from the
routing tables.  Although ifconfig/iwconfig showed no wlan0 adapter, netstat -r did.

By the way, it took a lot of work to configure fc6 to use my wifi
(downloading/compiling kernel modules) -- it's really cool that fc7 was able to
access it out of the box.

I have repaired my instance of the problem by configuring the wifi adapter via
the network manager to use my essid and key.