[General] Coming Soon to a Ubuntu PC Near You

[Burhan Khalid]

Hello All:

This is network-manager 0.7, which comes as standard on Fedora 9 but not 
in Hardy (8.04); there is a developer who is working on backporting it 
to ubuntu, and I am one of the people testing the software for him. It 
should be available in Intrepid (the next version of Ubuntu, 8.10), but 
it has not "officially" been added to the main package list as of yet.

There are lots of improvements in this version, including integrated VPN 
support, profiles, WWAN support (as you saw), a lot better wlan support 
including less dropping of signals and quicker scanning of APs.

The software still has many bugs, some really annoying ones such as:

1. Cannot save static IP profiles for ethX networks.
2. Firefox will put itself in 'offline' mode when network manager is in use.
3. Multiple (redundant) profiles automatically generated.
4. Saving passwords doesn't work yet

A previous bug created a zombie pppd process that would lock the ttyUSB0 
device -- in other words, once you clicked on "connect", and it wouldn't 
connect, you cannot use the same device again unless you reboot the 
computer because the pppd process itself was zombied, permanently 
blocking the port; imagine how lovely that is :)

The main reason I am using it is for the WWAN support, it is INSTANT 
detection and activation. To get maximum use out of it, you should 
disable the PIN entry on your device.

Then, as soon as you plug it in and the network manager applet is 
started, you will get a password prompt -- simply type 'hspps' and hit 
enter (this is due to bug #4, where it doesn't save passwords).

WNet users simply hit enter as there is no password for your setup.

So, if you are very comfortable with editing network profiles and 
manually configuring networks, I invite you to try it out.

Steps to install it:

1. Add these two lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/ubuntu hardy main

2. Run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

3. Restart your gnome session (logout and login again from gdm), or for 
the impatient, ctrl+alt+backspace to restart the entire X server.

Again, unless you are comfortable with networking scripts on 
debian/ubuntu, please do not use this on production machines -- /yet/

Regards,
--
Burhan Khalid

Abdullah AL Hamad wrote:
> Thats Great.
>  
> Is there a link for the software.
>  
> 
>  
> On 8/11/08, *Ahmad Al-Ibrahim* <ahmad at koutbo6.com 
> <mailto:ahmad at koutbo6.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Great work Burhan, I suggest naming it network-manager-wwan.
> 
>     Burhan Khalid wrote:
>      > http://www.burhan.me/images/gsm-network-manager-ubuntu.png
>      >
>      > Just working out some bugs in the software before I do my write up :)
>      >
>      >
>      >
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