Is this a bug in Network Centre?

[viking777]

Right click drakconnect then select 'configure network' . Choose 'Bluetooth Dial Up Networking' then click next. In my case it correctly identifies my mobile phone as a modem and clicking on next leads to the configuration screen where my connection is not one of those listed. If I elect to set it manually it asks for three pieces of information, APN, username and password. I fill these in and it goes away and thinks about it for a while and then comes back and says that the connection has been configured.

 

This would be fine if it were true, and indeed to some extent it is, but it still won't work. It took me a long time to find out that it writes its configuration information to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/chat-ppp0, but when I did the reason it didn't work became fairly obvious. For one thing it was using the wrong phone number and for another (although this took me even longer to find out) it was using a connection script which does not work with my provider. When I corrected these two items the connection worked like a dream directly from drakconnect.

 

Why do I think this might be a bug? Well, I grant you most people would not necessarily know the correct configuration script to use so perhaps it needs to make an educated guess as to what that should be, but most people would surely know what phone number they need to dial, so why doesn't it just ask for this when it asks for APN etc rather than try to guess one when it already admits to not knowing the details of my connection (unlisted)? That is what kppp does. Furthermore, using the wrong phone number mostly only results in an inability to connect, but it could result in a user inadvertantly connecting to the wrong number (for which he or she does not have a contract) and racking up huge usage charges.

 

I feel that the interface should be rewritten so that it asks for a phone number as well as apn etc.

 

PS In case anyone is interested the connect script error was this:

 

 OK-AT-OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","three.co.uk"'

 

With that line the connection would never make, without it it works perfectly every time.

[Greg2]

Yes, that is a bug: Bug# 28675

 

Please add your info to it. :)

[viking777]

Greg,

 

Thank you very much for pointing that out, I guess I should spend a bit more time looking at bugzilla!

 

I have done as you suggested and added my own input to that bug. Unfortunately my 'foolproof solution' is not quite a foolproof as I thought. After shutting down the computer for an hour or so I returned to find that I am completely unable to get a connection with drakconnect and my bluetooth mobile. Although I am able to get one with wvdial, so I may have stumbled upon the problem, but I certainly haven't - as yet - found a solution (unless you count using wvdial!)

[Greg2]

I have done as you suggested and added my own input to that bug.

Thanks for reporting the bug and adding to the bug report. However the devs need to know what version of Mandriva, and the rpms you're using. Please add that to the report. It would be the output of

cat /etc/release && rpm -qa |grep drakx-net

Thanks

[viking777]

Done.

 

Thanks once again.