Here’s a kind of an application that is sorely missing from a stock Gnome installation and not many Gnome users know about: Gnome-PPP, a front-end to the wvDial, a modem/ISDN dial-up software. Read more for some quick info on the app and a screenshot.
Version 0.2.1 was released just yesterday. To get a working copy of Gnome-ppp, you will need a modem, the pppd daemon and the wvDial software (stock Slackware has a problem with wvDial, but fortunately a patched package is available).
The application greets you with a small window asking you username, password and phone number to dial out. Clicking “Setup”, it will load a window with four tab views each one with preference items.
You can select your device (analog or USB modem and ISDN modem — not sure how this would work with an internal ISA or PCI modem card but external 56k modems work), the speed you want it to connect to, speaker’s volume, initialization strings for those who understand the modem tongue, up to 4 phone numbers just in case a phone number is busy (with prefix support), number of dialing attempts, DNS info (automatic DNS also support by default), and even more options on the last tab view where you can tell the modem to auto-reconnect and to minimize in the notification area upon connection.
What I love about this application are two things:
a. It gets to the point with easy to understand options.
b. It follows the HIG as much as it is possible, making the app look clean and well-thought.
For the future the author is reading support for multiple accounts (by using a wizard for new connections).
The application works really well and it looks good despite its 0.2.1 version. It wouldn’t be stretched out suggesting to the author to propose the software for inclusion with Gnome 2.8 (if the Gnome project doesn’t mind the wvDial dependency). This is a worthy application.
I am running a Fedora installation without KDE. Before I used to leave KPPP for dialup, then I got used to using the “modem lights” applet. Now with Gnome-PPP life will be easier.
Thank you.
Well, people often doesn’t need this. In fedora/redhat there
is system-config-network/redhat-config-network and other tools. SuSE has yast.
Mdk, Xandros, Lindows, Lycoris, SuSE and RH have tools indeed. But just about everyone else, from BSD to Debian/Gentoo/Slackware/etc don’t, and these “others” account for the other half of the BSD/Linux Gnome users, so this application is an important one.
I mentioned the “modem lights”. And also you have “network device control” as another distro tool. But they are not as “natural” as KPPP, and now GPPP, is.
KDE has had KPPP for ages, which make dial up so easy (provided your distro provides winmodem drivers). With GPPP, GNOME will be able to compete for dial up users, who still make up the majority of internet users at the moment. So I too hope it gets included in GNOME 2.8.
KPPP seems to be being forgotten by most distros, which is a pity as it’s one of the best dial-ups out there. It’s interface is very similar to GnomePPP’s above, but it also comes with accounting info for almost every ISP in the world (even Ireland!), which is dead handy for figuring out who’s responsible for the phone bill
Unfortunately it’s being replaced with silly compromised. I last used RedHat 8.0, and it’s dial-up program would freeze during dialup and crash if the dial-up failed. SuSE used KInternet, a KDE systray applet, which means it doesn’t work in any other DE, including Gnome, and what’s worse, doesn’t suppory accounting.
So what I’m trying to say is, as a modem user, Bring back KPPP!!!.
I’ve lost some days everytime I had to configure dialup on each distro, then I gave up. KPPP is the only reason I have some KDE libraries installed, otherwise I rather reboot the machine into wins than install any K-stuff. It’s not that K is evil, apps that depend on UI are evil. Anyway, this GPPP will do just fine
Thanks Vladimir.
The BEST thing i ever learnt in the “bad” old days of modems was to memorize how to setup pppd via the CLI on Linux and FreeBSD (same config except for the device..I think). That way i never had to rely on GUIs…i just had to type pppd to initiate.
(That and the fact it was my job to setup FreeBSD boxes for companies with permanent modems) Great OS that…sigh…back to my Win2003 Server.
Dude great work
I didn’t try 0.2.1 (i see you add docking support), it’s great..
Only, I think we could add different docking icons.. ?
p.s. Sorry for my bad english
Nice to see something like this done. Like others here, I’ve been using KPPP, though KDE is not my DE of choice (currently XFCE4). I’d been thinking I might try to wip up some front end to wvdial in Python using Tk or something myself (Wouldn’t be too pretty but I’d think it would be faster than using stuff dependant on either KDE or GNOME libs). (I’m by no means a Python, or any language expert, thought it would be a good experiment though to learn with). Actually did it already, but it was quite primitive.
Problem I’m having though with wvdial currently is that I can’t get it to work with my current distro (Debian Sarge). It dials out the number correctly, but then can’t authenticate properly. Strangely though, KPPP does work (for my regular user account too, after much fighting with it and permissions.) Any one else have a similar problem?
Not to detract from the creator of this application – it’s obviously much needed.
Doesn’t the fact that this considered newsworthy say much about the useability of standard Linix out-of-the-box. I have used a number of major distributions over the last few years and one of the main problem areas has been dial-up connectivity.
Let’s face it, this should be pretty basic stuff.
I used to use kppp for my dialup both in Gnome and XFce. But I got tired of the time it would take to load all the KDE libs in a GTK IDE. I never was able to get wvDial to work properly outside of root, but I found vppp which works just as well as kppp and loads a lot faster in a GTK environment:
http://www.linux-kheops.com/pub/vppp/vpppGB.html
It does have an ugly Tk gui interface but in Gnome I use modem-lights to control it and run it auto minimized. Similarily in XFce4 I use the two-state trigger accessory to run it.
Given that gnome-PPP sounds promising and I guess I’ll give it a try
> SuSE used KInternet, a KDE systray applet, which means it doesn’t work in any other DE, including Gnome
but the good thing is it has a command line frontend as well (cinternet) which you can use in scripts. when my mother still used Suse i set up a (three line) script that would connect, run fetchmail, and disconnect upon login.
so i was just wondering: does gnome ppp have a command line frontend (can’t try it out myself right now)?
that would definitely be a bonus (sure, i can always use wvdial in scripts, but it sucks).
How many millions of people still use dial up for their internet access, and piddly programs like kppp and gppp don’t get installed by default by a lot of distros?
It’s great app. redhat(system)-config-network is overkill to use, so this is wonderfull.
But, anyone has problems like I do have with gnome-ppp?
It connects, but there is no icon in systray in XFce4 or in notification area in Gnome panel? (I think it is because gnome-ppp fails to pick up connection details). Fedora Core 2 here. kppp and XFce4 netstatus plug-in pick up connections details.
Other then that, it works great.
Vlado care 🙂
From article:
>not sure how this would work
>with an internal ISA or PCI modem
Works with my internal ISA Rockwell 33.6 modem. When I click “Autodetect”, it finds it without problems.
Thanks for the heads up on this, Eugenia. As a GNOME user, I always like to find out about good little GNOME 2 apps.
Very good job., that’s a great tool.
When I first started using GNU/Linux I used KDE — but only because of KPPP.
[many distro’s later] Recently I tried Slack 9, but never could get ppp working and so dumped it. I used the pppsetup (I think that’s what it’s called) program, and I’ve got a pretty standard configuration. I posted on the newsgroups about it, got lots of help from real experts, but still no joy. Did *not* try wvdial. I think it should’ve worked without wvdial.
Installed RH9 and dialup was working. (No idea whether RH9 used wvdial or not.)
The moral? Good dialup software has gotta be anal and paranoid about checking everything over for correctness and consistency. Just have a look at any of the many long and complex linux ppp howto’s to see all the pitfalls.
Gnome-PPP looks great, except for the fact that it seems to accidentally blur out Eugenia’s phone number in the main dialog so we can’t prank-call her home. But once that bug is fixed, this should be just what the doctor ordered for Gnome.
When I used to connect thru modem, KPPP always worked. I think KPPP should be the first choice to anyone that needs dial up.
except for the fact that it seems to accidentally blur out Eugenia’s phone number in the main dialog so we can’t prank-call her home.
Argh. My joke flopped. That’s, of course, her ISP’s phone number, not her home phone. I knew I should’ve had my cup of joe this morning…
Anyhow, like anon said, thanks for the heads-up Eugenia.
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5629
This is where vladeck’s been getting quite a bit of suggestions and bug reports…if you’re having problems, and need to ask him something.
Dial up, what’s that?
Man, I could have used this a few years back, when I still had a telephone modem. wvdial and memory cores, fond memories – not!
Glad to see that Gnome is still supporting PPP, though.
Will
wvdial doesn’t connect with my ISDN ‘modem’.
pppd with scripts does.
interesting ha? I can’t figure a way to fix this. I pass the same AT comamnds to pppd and wvdial but wvdial just does NOT work. so I guess gnome-ppp won’t work either. how sad is this! [oh and another important thing missing: “kppp has volume and accounting rules system” this is important for such an application] So i still hope gppp ( http://www.rcub.bg.ac.yu/~bruce/gppp/ ) to finish [afterall this is front-end to pppd]
> When I first started using GNU/Linux I used KDE — but only because of KPPP.
> Recently I tried Slack 9, but never could get ppp working and so dumped it. I used the pppsetup
slack includes kppp and it works just as great and simple as in any other distro. no need to worry about pppsetup, wvdial, ….
>> When I first started using GNU/Linux I used KDE — but only because of KPPP.
>> Recently I tried Slack 9, but never could get ppp working and so dumped it. I used the pppsetup
>in any other distro. no need to worry about pppsetup, wvdial
pppsetup is the easiest tool I’ve used for modem connection, ever. (even easier than Kppp) You run it at the command line and answer a couple questions.
You can edit /etc/ppp/chat-script to read like this if you want a “quiet” modem, where it says “ATDxxxxxxx” change it to “ATM0Dxxxxxxx” that’s “M” and a “zero”.
Then tell modem lights to “ppp -c” to connect, and “ppp -d” to disconnect.
No UI lag
“…I never was able to get wvDial to work properly outside of root…”
Try this HOWTO:
http://www.electronicschat.org/nonroot-dialout/
It worked for me. It should be possible to write a wizard that could automatically perform all the actions to setup wvDial for non-root dialing. The problem is, this wizard would have to be run as root.
Thank the good lord Christ somebody posted this one ~ yeesh. I’m sick to death of ‘modem lights.’ I can’t get the stupid thing configured properly to run with wvDial, so I just use it as a monitor since I have to leave QInternet open all the time. I’m at work now so I can’t try it out just yet, but I sure as hell will when I get home.
This app is quite rightly NOT in a stock gnome installation. First off it depends on a non-gnome package that is optional in most Linux distros. Second and more serious gnome is not only used on Linux – wvdial AFAIK is a Linux-only app, it has no business being in stock gnome which is meant to be the same on every os (linux,solaris,freebsd,etc)
Perhaps you mean it is absent from distros ?
“it has no business being in stock gnome which is meant to be the same on every os (linux,solaris,freebsd,etc) ”
its portable across all of the operating systems with trivial amount of work. may be you should look closer?
Maybe it is portablw (sic) but if there are ports I haven’t found them. Point me to ports for the 2 other major os’s gnome runs on : FreeBSD and Solaris. Unlike you apparently, I DID search (for FreeBSD) long and hard and came up empty.
If you can find a port for FreeBSD i would be grateful, but put up or shut up.
By the way, why wvdialconf still can’t detect winmodems so one has to create fake serial port in /dev as a symlink to /dev/modem?
I’ve been able to successfully use the Modem Lights applet with wvDial on my Mandrake 10. I also use KPPP when using KDE.
GPPP might be a step in the right direction. IHMO, Linux, whether using Gnome or KDE, needs to make it brain-dead simple to do a dial-up connection, since most home users are still using dial-up. With stock Gnome, it needs to be built in, whether that is GPPP or Modem Lights. And with KDE, even though KPPP is extremely simple to use, it needs to be renamed. Newbies are not going to have the slightest idea what KPPP is. It needs to renamed “KDE Modem Dialer”, or something like that. At least with Gnome’s Modem Lights applet, the newbie gets an idea of what it’s used for (even though it’s some work to get it to work).
In short, Linux/GNOME/KDE all need simple, intuitive, automatic, built-in modem dial up programs that are brain-dead simple to use and configure.
“If you can find a port for FreeBSD i would be grateful, but put up or shut up.”
what can of attitude is that. i should provide you a link to a freebsd port or just shut up instead of telling you that gppp is indeed portable with some amount of work?
go. get lost
what can of attitude is that. i should provide you a link to a freebsd port or just shut up instead of telling you that gppp is indeed portable with some amount of work?
gppp is very portable (it looks pretty nice too – props to the author), that wasn’t my point though. If you read closely you’ll see I said wvdial wasn’t so portable and if it was it hadn’t been ported yet. Gppp is a front end to this software.
I really don’t need to be told to ‘look closer’ by some anonymous poster with no clue – this will be my last response, but feel free to have the last word if you must :-).
In my opinion the best dialer after kppp is xisp; it also includes accounting like kppp though doesn’t have as large a database as that of kppp (it is very simple to add new entries if you know the rules and xisp has gui for doing it). The only downside for some is that it uses xforms toolkit, but that also makes it faster than others.
available at: http://xisp.hellug.gr/
@last, thanx!
pppsetup is the easiest tool I’ve used for modem connection, ever. (even easier than Kppp) You run it at the command line and answer a couple questions.
Yeah, pppsetup is an easy tool to use. My problem seemed to
be that maybe it wasn’t doing enough consistency checking for
me. There was some weird problem that kept my dialup setup
from working. Maybe if pppsetup checked for a few more corner
cases (i.e. making sure other stuff is set up correctly for ppp to
work right) it would be the perfect tool.
How about http://sourceforge.net/projects/gppp/
Home page is http://www.rcub.bg.ac.yu/~bruce/gppp/
I didn’t try it and it is still alpha but it looks good.