[How-to] Chestnut-dialer - Finally a good GUI for Gnome

[ralf57]

I've recently discovered this cool Pyton application at gnomefiles.org
I suddenly felt in love with it since it's really clean and easy to use.
This little tutorial refers to 0.2.2 version,the latest available.

1)Download the application from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/chestnut-dialer/

2)Install it following these steps:
- Uncompress the package
- cd into the created directory (chestnut-dialer-0.2.2)
- type:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Note: if you have 'checkinstall' installed in your system you can type

sudo make checkinstall

This will install the program and also build a .deb package for future usage.
Furthermore the application will be available via APT/Synaptic.
If you have troubles see README file for detailed instructions.

3)First run.
Type:

chestnut-dialer -i gtk2

The main panel will appear;now you can configure Options,the Default Account settings
and add your custom account(s).
At this point you should be ready to browse the net.

################
Troubleshooting
################

You might experience troubles
connecting to the net and receive errors like these:

EAP: unauthenticated peer name "foo-as5850-001" 
PAP authentication succeeded
EAP: too many Requests sent
Connection terminated.

Don't worry.
Type:

sudo gedit /etc/ppp/options

find

auth

and replace with

noauth

then in
chestnut-dialer >> confaccount >> your_account >> PPP tab
make sure 'Add default route' is checked
and add 'noipdefault' (without quotes)
to PPP Options

Everything should be ok now.

###########################
Docking to systray
###########################
One of the few missing features at the
moment is the option to dock the program
to the notification area after a connection has
been established.
Btw,i've found a simple workaround to this.

1) Download the 'alltray' application from
http://alltray.sourceforge.net/downloads.html
Be sure to get the last version.

2) Install it to your system.

3) Go to
System >> Preferences >> Sessions >> Boot-up programs
Add a new command

alltray chestnut-dialer

The next time you load Gnome desktop a nice icon will
appear in the notification area ready to connect your box to the net.

Enjoy!

*** ralf57 ***

[arnieboy]

I didn't know about alltray! turns out its the application I was looking for!! thanks a lot dude!!
apps like thunderbird were begging for an app like this

[snarkout]

Thank you! This is very useful.

[ralf57]

Thank you! This is very useful.

Glad to know it is.

[Izzin]

Chestnut Dialer is actually my preferred dialer for when I use the new Sprint PCS cards. However I recently installed Edgy and for some reason I am unable to get Chestnut to function.

When I go to execute the program it just hangs, no debug out put, nothing. I am able to execute chestnut-dialer --help, and it pulls up help, and able to do chestnut-dialer --list-ui and get the ui listing. However I can not go further then that.

If anyone has any debug assistance it would be greatly appreciated.

-I

[frank56economicsman]

I used chestnut-dialer in vectorlinux and liked it. I used dh-make to build my package for a debian installation. I got it to dial from terminal but in my case did not know what step to take to get gtk2 front end to initiate or start. I also am getting this error on termimal:

franksdebiannetwork:/home/frank# chestnut-dialer
/usr/share/chestnut-dialer/chestnut_dialer/connection.py:190: RuntimeWarning: tempnam is a potential security risk to your program
file_name = os.tempnam()

I was guessing so I tried converting rpm gtk and got this error message:

Errors were encountered while processing:
chestnut-dialer-gtk2_0.3.3-2all.deb
franksdebiannetwork:/home/frank/Desktop# dpkg -i chestnut-dialer-gtk2_0.3.3-2_all.deb
Selecting previously deselected package chestnut-dialer-gtk2.
(Reading database ... 94997 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking chestnut-dialer-gtk2 (from chestnut-dialer-gtk2_0.3.3-2_all.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing chestnut-dialer-gtk2_0.3.3-2_all.deb (--install):
trying to overwrite `/usr/share/chestnut-dialer/chestnut_dialer/gtk2_ui/box.pyo', which is also in package chestnut-dialer
Errors were encountered while processing:
chestnut-dialer-gtk2_0.3.3-2_all.deb
franksdebiannetwork:/home/frank/Desktop#

I read the README files and did ./configure then make, then make install, everything seem to progress without errors but, it did not give me a chestnut dialer on Desktop

Frank