Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 5108
ppp failure pops up Red Hat registration box
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:51 EDT
PPP annoyances. Of course, since this was a RedHat distribution, PPP required the user to be root to open a connection. Although this is a VFAQ, and it is covered in the PPP HOWTO, it is still a usability issue. It could be very confusing to the new user, especially one who did not have to wrestle with chmod u+s and privilige issues under Windows. Also, the paths are not found for a regular user. The workaround for this is to type the full path (/usr/sbin/ppp-on etc.) but then the user can rightfully ask why it is not simpler. The workaround for this is to set up links in the user's home/bin directory, but this is complicated, and usually requires a site visit (very inconvenient). One even more annoying thing, which resulted in an unpleasant late night service call, was the cryptic nature of PPP failure. If PPP fails to connect, ppp-on should terminate with the message "PPP call failed". That is the least it should do. Actually, it should pop a dialog box that tells why there was a problem. Using /sbin/ifconfig, then browsing the log file for messages is too unfriendly for the non-Unix guru. When the failure occurred, the first symptom noted was that a dialog box popped up suggesting that the user register the software with the RedHat site. First, this was not a packaged CDROM install, so registration was not an issue. Second, it never should have asked for registration, since registration cannot be performed when the link is malfunctioning. Third, nag boxes are intrusive, even if they are called for. Fourth, this is not the appropriate error message. "PPP call failed" is the appropriate error message. Closing the dialog box worked, but then no sites were accessible. Accessing them failed with the ubiquitous DNS address not found error. Again, this is not the problem. The ppp call failed. This was probably due to the ISP, but it was certainly not due to the fact that the software had not been registered with RedHat. The software does not need to be registered, and without an ID number, it cannot even be registered with RedHat.
PPP connections are being worked on to be more intuitive and user friendly for the next release. Until then the method we use most often to bring up and down ppp interfaces is to treat it like a normal network device. Using netconfig or linuxconf, it creates a /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/chat-ppp0 which has all the necessary information in them. Netconfig and linuxconf also ask if users should be allowed to bring this interface up and therefore will allow normal users to type ifup ppp0 and ifdown ppp0 without being root.