Modem and Network Connection
Anthony M Simonelli
a.simonelli at sbcglobal.net
Tue Mar 20 03:35:48 UTC 2007
On Mon, 2007-03-19 at 18:48 -0500, John M. Moniz wrote:
> I recently installed Ubuntu 6.06 from a live CD to my mother-in-law's PC
> and there were a few things I am not yet happy with. But I'll just stick
> to the modem and networking issues.
>
> At boot-up:
> 1) When the PC boots up, the modem dials the ISP all on its own. That's
> actually pretty annoying as the first task always has to be to break the
> connection unless she's immediately going to the internet. I could not
> find a configuration to disable the dialing at boot and I don't like my
> solution, which was to rename /etc/ppp/dial_on_boot (I'm going by memory
> on the file name, so may be slightly off). There's probably a
> configuration somewhere for this and it would be nice to know what it is.
>
> Dialing up the modem on demand is not very convenient the way I left it
> for her:
> 2) I have put the network connection icon on her desktop and on the top
> panel so she can connect or disconnect from the network. Somehow, I
> don't think this network connection utility is the best thing to use
> because it is really a network configuration utility. As such, takes a
> while to open up (since it searches for existing configurations every
> time) and it also requires a password each time. Even getting rid of the
> password requirement would be a help, but a quick dialing script would
> be best.
>
> 3) For dialing the modem, I actually found some applet (red telephone
> icon) that I added to the top panel and it seems that it's what I'm
> looking for. But it simply doesn't work. It doesn't dial and it doesn't
> disconnect. It is also suppose to give the connection status, but
> sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And I can't bring up the
> properties to see if there is something that I could reconfigure to make
> it work. I also can't tell what the name of that utility is to reinstall.
>
> Any ideas on any of the above would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> John.
>
Though it is part of the universe repository, I use GnomePPP to dial
into my company's network. It is basically a frontend to WVdial, a
command-line dialer. It has an option to dock the program into the tray
after it's connected. Double-clicking the tray icon provides connection
stats.
I suggest removing any PPP connections from your Network settings,
install GnomePPP (sudo aptitude install gnomeppp), and give that a try.
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