[maemo-developers] Localhost unavailable when wi-fi offline or not connected

[From: David Hagood]

On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 11:11 +0300, Kalle Valo wrote:
> "ext Mike Cowlishaw" <mfc at acm.org> writes:
> 
> > While trying to test this on an aeroplane at the weekend -- with Wi-Fi
> > offline, of course -- the browser would not connect to the server.  I've
> > since experimented further and find a similar (or the same) problem occurs
> > online if no Wi-Fi connection is active.
> >
> > This is a showstopper for my application as it means I cannot easily view my
> > data unless online and connected -- is there a fix/workaround?

The current method Maemo uses to detect an application wanting to access
the Internet (by using ld.so tricks to hook into the socket() call)
seems kind of kludgy to me - why not use the same sort of trick that PPP
uses, where a network interface always exists and is tied to the default
route, and when a packet is delivered to that interface for routing THEN
bring up the appropriate connections.

It would take modifications to the kernel - ideally some sort of DBUS
message when a packet needs to be routed - but this would remove the
need to hook into applications, and allow ANY app to generate a request
for connection.