Shouldn't mention network-admin to set up modems

[Milan Bouchet-Valat]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-docs

In Lucid, network-admin has no Connections tab, which is still mentioned in the modems configuration page. So network-admin should be removed, and ModemManager be presented instead. It's installed by default and integrates correctly with NetworkManager.

The problem is, it's hard to fix this without breaking translations, but it might be worth it, because ATM this page is *completely* useless, since there's no way to get the described UI back, even by installing packages.

See bug 574067 about the removed Connections tab. Another solution would be to bring this tab back, since UbuntuStudio seems to need it.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

Thanks for the bug. This is definitely something that we can investigate solving as part of our plans for a Lucid update to ubuntu-docs. It's not a problem to remove material, as that will not break translations. Equally, we have a plan to release updated translations too, so if we can keep the new strings to a minimum, it is worth fixing this bug.

The problem we have is that most ubuntu-docs members aren't familiar with serial modems so can't test this use case. Milan, if you have any experience with this type of modem and can draft some short material which improves the user experience here, we would be very pleased to review it.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Sorry, I've not used modems for years, and I'm not familiar with ModemManager at all!

Another issue is that now that I've made a little research, it doesn't seem that ModemManager supports 56k serial/usb modems, only 3G devices and the like. So, that would mean we've no support for these devices in Lucid?!

[Matthew East (mdke)]

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Milan Bouchet-Valat <email address hidden> wrote:
> So, that would mean we've no support for these devices in
> Lucid?!

Could be. We'll need to ask around to resolve this.

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[Tom H. (hoyt-itteki)]

I just installed 10.04 and have a dial-up modem that I need to work with. The computer I installed it on spends most of the week in rural areas where dial-up is the only real option for internet access.

So, I used the modem connection page from 9.10 documentation, thinking it would work, and ran into the lack of a Connections tab as Milan noted. Although the difference in release version is clear, it might be nice to have a notice that this does not work in 10.04.

If you need someone to write dial-up documentation for 10.04, I would be happy to give it a try, but first I would need to know whether 10.04 supports dial-up. I'll search around and see what I can find.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Tom H. <email address hidden> wrote:
> If you need someone to write dial-up documentation for 10.04, I would be
> happy to give it a try, but first I would need to know whether 10.04
> supports dial-up.  I'll search around and see what I can find.

Tom, any work you can do on this would be much appreciated, thanks!

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

I think we should rather bring back the Connections tab and fix bug 574067 instead of changing the documentation. It doesn't seem that there's another way of configuring dial-up modems, and Ubuntu Studio needs that Connections tab. So, please go ahead and suggest a documentation, and hopefully we'll bring that tab back! Thanks!

[Mauro Perin (mauro-perin)]

Hello, I've experienced this problem as well, on a old-but-still-working Dell C610 with internal modem Intel 82801 (AC '97). If you need I can test the fix when there is one.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Matthew: After having investigated a little about 56k modems, I think a good replacement of gnome-network-admin's Connections tab would be gnome-ppp. It's already described in the online documentation at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DialupModemHowto/SetUpDialer, which could be used as a good basis for the shipped docs.

Since the fix for bug 574067 only reintroduced network-admin's Connections tab when NetworkManager is present (i.e. on Ubuntu Studio), I think we should now assume it won't be present in future versions of Ubuntu. So the docs should only mention gnome-ppp (and kppp, etc.). That's easy, it merely means removing the part about "NetworkAdmin" (gnome-network-admin, which can easily be confused with NetworkManager).

As a bonus, the docs should tell people to disable network management via the NetworkManager applet, because it conflicts with other ppp managers. People should simply right click on the network applet, and uncheck the "Enable network" box.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Closing the top level task for this since the docs no longer talk about dialup modems. The bug is still valid for Lucid docs if we decide to update them, see https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/internet/C/modem-connect.html

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

I marked bug 521541 as a duplicate of this, which suggests using Gnome-ppp as opposed to network-admin. If we update these docs for Lucid, I expect this is the best place to start investigating options.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Lucid desktop is EOL