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Thread: Dial-up Redux

  1. #21
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    Hi, George -
    What you describe dovetails nicely with my latest experience. A few days ago I screwed up the Jaunty install on PC2, our main desktop PC. A smarter person would have known how to fix it. I reinstalled. Figured I could just re-use some of the PDS packages I'd created several days ago for the same PC, but Synaptic looked at the PDS'es and wanted to download 10 to 12MB. So I built new PDS'es, went back to the library, etc. etc. and these new packages installed without any fuss. Except the "restricted-extras" PDS, which I'll explain below.

    So. After creating, downloading and installing a couple of dozen PDS'es I have two comments.

    First, if we were to round up 1000 PC's running Ubuntu and compare their package lists, maybe 3 of them would be identical. Thank God apt-get can keep track of what's needed.

    Second, apt-get seems to be fairly forgiving. It'll skip over packages that it doesn't need. And as you saw, instead of just throwing its hands up when it doesn't have all the packages, it'll tell you what else it needs.

    When I tried to install the "restricted-extras" PDS to the fresh Jaunty installation on PC2 just yesterday, apt-get said it needed a couple of packages. I stopped right there, clicked on gnome-ppp, got online, then went back to Synaptic and clicked OK. It downloaded a couple of small packages, then it turned back to the PDS and installed everything!

    Thanks for describing your work-around if Synaptic doesn't automagically start installing the PDS. Good to know there's more than one way. I wonder why Synaptic balked?
    Last edited by Bartender; January 24th, 2010 at 03:06 PM.

  2. #22
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    George Vita -

    I want to make sure we got this right. Synaptic didn't start installing the packages, so you had to do a few distinct tasks -

    1 - Copy all the packages from the PDS on thumbdrive or desktop or wherever into /var/cache/apt/archives
    I attached a screenshot of what that folder looks like from the Nautilus browser - did you have to "sudo" anything, or was this a simple drag-and-drop?

    2- The command you ran from terminal - was that one command or two? Is this what you did?

    Code:
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
    And you'd want to be online before running the above command, correct?
    Attached Images Attached Images

  3. #23
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    My procedure to make my EeePC 1000H a 'dual-boot' with semi-offline update:

    a. All .deb (PDS) downloaded
    - PDS (post#19) copied to a text file into a directory ('arch910') at USB mem
    - from terminal: 'cd ...' into that directory, and 'sudo sh get910pds'
    - all .deb files downloaded into that directory

    b. Fresh installation
    - Boot LiveUSB with Ubuntu 9.10 desktop
    - 'install Ubuntu', re-partition 'D' drive (sda2) to have '/' ext3 and swap
    - reboot on new installation

    c. Synaptic > File > Add downloaded packages > point to USB mem directory
    - NO ACTION! (did not used the downloaded packages)

    d. 3g connected and 'sudo apt-get update'

    e. disconnected

    f. Synaptic > File > Add downloaded packages > point to USB mem directory
    - ALL INSTALLED OK (a small delay + grey screen appears in the start of this process)

    g. 3g connected, 'sudo apt-get dist upgrade'
    > 1st try: 35MB more needed and downloaded
    > 2nd try: manually added all .deb files from /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory into the USB mem (PDS .deb + that of 1st try) resulting to 0MB needed

    Final check (+1) to another desktop:
    - Boot LiveCD (9.10) and install
    - System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager
    - Add downloaded packages = NO ACTION
    - Connected to internet
    - 'Reload' at synaptic
    - Disconnected
    - Add downloaded packages (pointing to USB mem directory) made FULL update
    - Restart
    - Connected and checked that was updated (via 'check' of Update Manager, or 'Reload' at Synaptic)

    Regards,
    George

    P.S. Double+1 checked with triple+1 formatted Ubuntu partition. (+1 = other PC)
    >>> Still missing the offline 'sudo apt-get update'
    Last edited by GeorgeVita; January 25th, 2010 at 04:15 PM.

  4. #24
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    There are three compact USB modems

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16825164005
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16825104006
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16825115031

    that have positive Linux reviews. I'm very curious about these. I believe they did not work very well when first introduced but kernel revisions may have solved the problems?

    Well, except for the modemmanager problem mentioned with 9.10. Does anyone have any feedback on these? I'd like to test them all but don't have that level of discretionary income

  5. #25
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    Just wanted to say a big thankyou to Bartender, George Vita and lkraemer for their info on getting dial up working.
    If it wasn't for guys like you I'd be looking at a couple of months of wasted effort and probably abandoning Ubuntu - again - so thanks & keep up the good work!

  6. #26
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    Well, thanks for the thanks! I'm not an expert on dial-up, but don't need to be. I just figured it was time to try and pick everybody's minds for good stuff, then collect it as well as can be done within the forum environment.

    Forums can be great, but there's definitely a random factor to the quality of help you'll get. Depending on time of day, whether a new release just came out, if someone who had the exact same problem as you just happens to be online, etc. As we've all probably found out, "searching" the forum can be an exercise in futility.

    Add to that a really big problem with dial-up. Most of the active forum members have broadband. Within a few days of getting broadband, people probably purge their minds of the horrible dial-up experience. So we lose lots of smart people who, if they were all still stuck on dial-up, would be sharing their knowledge.

    And what we've got here is far from definitive. I'm concerned that new USB-based modems like the little Rosewill RNX-56 are a far better solution than scrounging eBay for ancient USR externals, but I haven't seen the RNX-56 in action so don't want to make a recommendation.

    We gotta stick together! Of course, if Qwest EVER runs DSL up the valley, I'll eBay most of my USR modems and it'll be hasta la vista, baby

  7. #27
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    This post does not really refer to most (or all?) of what people have been posting here, but I think it does fit under the subject of this thread, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it here.

    If you are using a USB modem and were using wvdial (or possibly another dialer) successfully in Ubuntu 9.04, but it no longer works (with the same settings) in Ubuntu 9.10, then you might want to check out this post for a workaround solution.
    May the fire touch our hearts and make us whole...

  8. #28
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    Good news:
    From https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/400573
    Steve Langasek wrote 15 hours ago: #9
    wvdial is now seeded in the liveCD bundled archive.
    Changed in ubuntu-meta (Ubuntu):
    status: New → Fix Released
    Regards,
    George

  9. #29
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    Hello,

    Perhaps you could help me seeing as you've gotten dial-up to work for you. I have Ubuntu 10.04 and I do have wvdial and gnome-ppp. Gnome-ppp can't find my modem at all and I even downloaded the closest drivers I could find to the ones that a program told me to get from the Linuxant website. Do you think you could point me in the right direction to getting connected? I have a Conexant modem in my computer. Any help would be appreciated

    -Thank you

  10. #30
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    Re: Dial-up Redux

    Xemnova, I haven't had the chance yet to try 10.04, and haven't done much with gnome-ppp, but you may be able to find some helpful info via the following Google search pages:

    --Scanning this page suggests that the problem you're having with gnome-ppp not working is a known bug, and if you poke around a bit in the various links you might be able to find a workaround to use until they get it fixed. If you can't get it working, there's a good chance you can use wvdial to get it to work, although you might have to sacrifice the graphical user interface (GUI).
    --This page gives a few links related to your particular modem (Conexant), but I'm not sure if anything there will be helpful.

    Not sure where you're at as far as experience with using a Linux system, but this page has a basic how-to on using wvdial with 10.04. If it works, great, but like I said, it's basic, and I know I've had to do a bit more tweaking with the modem I have to get it to work. If you're familiar with running scripts or want to take the time to learn how (it's probably easier than writing the script ), you might want to check out this page where there's a script available that provides a user interface for configuring the wvdial settings. I haven't tried either of these solutions myself, but they might be worth checking out if you're interested.

    Other combinations of searches via Google or within these forums will possibly give you some helpful information. Also, when dealing with a modem that no one else seemed to be using, I found it helpful to do some more general searches using something like 'wvdial' and 'usb modem' or something like that. Doing that will probably help you find out some ways to figure out how you will need to configure wvdial to get things to work. Just from what I've seen so far on these Google pages, my advice would be to try to get your connection to work with wvdial first, and then once that's working, focus on the problem with gnome-ppp.

    Hope this helps by giving you some ideas of where to start in solving your problem. There's also people on these forums who have more experience and knowledge than I do who might be able to help you, but your best chance at getting them to respond is to do as much research and troubleshooting as you can yourself, and then do a post with relevant details about what you've tried, error messages you've gotten, etc.

    Cheers!
    Last edited by DustStuff; May 3rd, 2010 at 03:15 AM. Reason: Added some links.
    May the fire touch our hearts and make us whole...

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