Dial-Up Support

[digital_resistance]

Hello,

Congratulations on your first release and what seems like a fine project!

Running the GNOME live CD has been going quite well for me so far* -- except when it came to trying to configure a dial-up connection.

(*Just when I was ready to post this, I experienced a complete freeze.)

First, I discovered that Gnome PPP was not only not included in the ISO but not even listed in the package manager-- even after updating* the list from the default sources[1].

*WiFi did work for me [2] and I was lucky enough to have access to a network-- something I don't always

KPPP was listed so I proceeded to download and install it and the necessary dependencies.[3]

A message appeared that everything was successfully installed but when I tried to actually run KPPP, I had nothing but trouble.

First, KPPP was nowhere to be found under any of the menus. So I opened a terminal...

Code: Select all

[live@localhost ~]$ kppp
kppp(2777)/kdeui (KIconLoader): Error: standard icon theme "oxygen" not found!

The first time I did this, the KPPP window did appear but the Configure... button was greyed-out. I closed KPPP and tried again a little later.

Once again, I opened KPPP from the terminal and got the same output that I copied above. Only this time, the "Configure..." button was not greyed and I was able to select and set-up my modem.

But then, just as I was about to configure an account in KPPP, it froze. Here is the output from the terminal:

Code: Select all

Connecting to deprecated signal QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QString,QString,QString)
kded(2887)/kdeui (KIconLoader): Error: standard icon theme "oxygen" not found!

kbuildsycoca4 running...
kbuildsycoca4(2891)/kdecore (services) KServicePrivate::init: The desktop entry file  "/usr/share/applications/kde4/trash.desktop"  has Type= "Link"  instead of "Application" or "Service"

kbuildsycoca4(2891) KBuildServiceFactory::createEntry: Invalid Service :  "/usr/share/applications/kde4/trash.desktop"
kbuildsycoca4(2891) KConfigGroup::readXdgListEntry: List entry Categories in "/usr/share/applications/gcalctool.desktop" is not compliant with XDG standard (missing trailing semicolon).
Killed

Finally, I tried using the Network Center to configure a dial-up connection. No go; there was no way to choose or specify the location I needed for my external USB modem: /dev/ttyACM0. (This was hardly any surprise, since I had already "been there, done that" in PCLinuxOS)

Since I have found very few GNU/Linux distros to come dial-up-ready[4], I would not have found the experience I described as unusual but for the following.

Before making this post, a Google search led me to a Mageia mailing list thread from October on the topic of dialup support:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.mageia.user/1636

There, I found a great deal of interest and concern expressed regarding trying to make Mageia as dial-up-friendly as practically possible. And making it such out-of-the-box was specifically mentioned (and apparently agreed upon) as a goal.[5]

So I cannot help but to wonder what happened along the way.

Or perhaps it is only the live version of Mageia that, presumably due to space constraints, lacks such dial-up support?

In any event, I certainly realize that this is only the first actual distribution release of Mageia and it takes some for any new project to reach a level of maturity and refinement.

I wish you all much success,

DR

NOTES:

[1]Let me note here that it took me a while to figure-out how to enable the default repositories and update the package list. I found the whole process rather awkward and confusing. (Including the "select media" terminology, which was completely foreign to me in this context.) But I suppose that may be because I have had no experience with Mandriva. My experience with a package manager has mainly been with Synaptic.

[2] And beautifully at that; my adapter was immediately recognized without a hitch and I found the way the "Network Center" performed for managing wireless connections far smoother than the "Network Manager" that has been the default in most other GNOME distros I have tried.

[3] Here again, the way a list of several dependencies to choose from is presented is rather confusing and not something I ever recall encountering in Synaptic.

[4] Of the distros I have tried that even include a dial-up app in the first place, I have only found two (currently, at least) in which dial-up just worked "out-of-the-box" without any trouble: PCLinuxOS (main KDE and GNOME editions) and Puppy Linux.

[5] Two quotes from that thread:

Also, I've seen bizarre things, like distros where the dialer is not installed
and you need to download it from Internet. But how the user will download the
dialer if the Internet does not work? No! Dial-up dialer should come installed
as default.

I think that we often forget that some users struggle with dial-up
connections. André pointed this out to us a couple of posts ago. Mageia
should maybe be a little more sensitive to this and have the tools for
dial-up connection already installed rather than having the user go back
and download either from the install disk or internet.

[djennings]

Hi and welcome to Mageia.
The primary objective of the devs in the first release was to have a stable release and get all the Mandriva packages building properly in the Mageia build system. Consequently apart from more up to date packages there is not too much different from Mandriva at the moment so any problem you had with the ppp dialler in Mageia Control Centre should be the same in Mandriva.

Can you tell us a little more about your modem? Entering lsusb and dmesg in a root terminal should identify the modem type and what the computer thinks is happening.
Making a symlink between /dev/ttyACM0 and /dev/modem may help with the ppp dialler in MCC

[speedyx]

I think the first goal of any distribution must be hardware compatibility. I can't obtain an internet connection on mageia, then mageia is unusable for me for now. I have only mobile broadband connection in this area. I use it very well with different distributions like sabayon, opensuse, debian, mint, ubuntu, pardus, chakra ...
I saw gnome-ppp is more compatible with mt ISPs than kppp even if I prefer KDE. wvdial worked always well.
Network manager only sometimes.
The mageia tool didn't work at all.
It ask me for a pin that my modem have not.
I tried to share my connection from other notebook but mageia tool can't connect to an ad-hoc shared connection.
I should wait to use mageia.

[wobo]

I picked "Other" from the poll options:
Even in a highly developed country like Germany you do not have wifi everywhere you go. Next option is a dial-up. I have a dial-up flat rate for my smartphone, so I make the connection with my smartphone and use it as a wifi access point (tethering). My laptop has no problems connecting.

@speedyx:
The requirements of users are manifold and there are distributions which cater to this but not to that. One of the great advantages of the Linux universe is that you will be able to find a distro which caters to all (or most) of your needs.

[Germ]

I'm still stuck with dialup. I installed Mageia with KDE desktop. kppp worked out of the box.