Firefox works offline due to NetworkManager interfaces being inactive

There's one improvement in Ubuntu 8.10 which is causing me some problems - NetworkManager can now detect my HSDPA. But it doesn't work and here's the log:

Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy pppd[9724]: Plugin /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/nm-pppd-plugin.so loaded.
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy pppd[9724]: pppd 2.4.4 started by root, uid 0
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy pppd[9724]: Using interface ppp0
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy pppd[9724]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy NetworkManager:   (ttyUSB0): device state change: 5 -> 6
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy pppd[9724]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy pppd[9724]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy NetworkManager:   (ttyUSB0): device state change: 6 -> 7
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy kernel: [ 2143.619828] PPP BSD Compression module registered
Nov 12 22:32:40 kimmy kernel: [ 2143.681813] PPP Deflate Compression module registered
Nov 12 22:32:42 kimmy pppd[9724]: Modem hangup
Nov 12 22:32:42 kimmy NetworkManager:   (ttyUSB0): device state change: 7 -> 9
Nov 12 22:32:42 kimmy NetworkManager:  [1226500362.016832] nm_serial_device_close(): Closing device 'ttyUSB0'
Nov 12 22:32:42 kimmy pppd[9724]: Connection terminated.

Then, the supposingly working gnome-ppp will start hanging up too and in order to bring it back to live, I have to run the vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux:

Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: pppd 2.4.4 started by yclian, uid 1000
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: using channel 7
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: Using interface ppp0
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: Warning - secret file /etc/ppp/pap-secrets has world and/or group access
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1   ]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x12     ]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: sent [LCP ConfRej id=0x12 ]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1   ]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x13    ]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x13    ]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0x0]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: rcvd [LCP DiscReq id=0x14 magic=0xe0777e]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: rcvd [CHAP Challenge id=0x1 <5053860912aec751b049750c32c838e8>, name = "UMTS_CHAP_SRVR"]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: Warning - secret file /etc/ppp/chap-secrets has world and/or group access
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: sent [CHAP Response id=0x1 <2fb0aedcf34cb0db311ad1a157c5be04>, name = "admin"]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0xe0777e 00 00 00 00]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: rcvd [CHAP Success id=0x1 ""]
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Nov 12 22:34:03 kimmy pppd[9843]: CHAP authentication succeeded
...
Nov 12 22:34:08 kimmy pppd[9843]: local  IP address 121.120.201.243
Nov 12 22:34:08 kimmy pppd[9843]: remote IP address 10.64.64.64
Nov 12 22:34:08 kimmy pppd[9843]: primary   DNS address 58.71.136.10
Nov 12 22:34:08 kimmy pppd[9843]: secondary DNS address 58.71.132.10
Nov 12 22:34:08 kimmy pppd[9843]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-up started (pid 9845)

Now, disconnecting it again, connecting with gnome-ppp will start working:

Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: pppd 2.4.4 started by yclian, uid 1000
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: using channel 8
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: Using interface ppp0
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: Warning - secret file /etc/ppp/pap-secrets has world and/or group access
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1   ]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x15     ]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: sent [LCP ConfRej id=0x15 ]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1   ]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x16    ]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x16    ]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0x0]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: rcvd [LCP DiscReq id=0x17 magic=0xe0cb68]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: rcvd [CHAP Challenge id=0x1 <7c2c8c8e00cabc94481272f65eb30ebb>, name = "UMTS_CHAP_SRVR"]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: Warning - secret file /etc/ppp/chap-secrets has world and/or group access
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: sent [CHAP Response id=0x1 , name = "maxis"]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0xe0cb68 00 00 00 00]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: rcvd [CHAP Success id=0x1 ""]
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Nov 12 22:34:24 kimmy pppd[9936]: CHAP authentication succeeded
...
Nov 12 22:34:27 kimmy pppd[9936]: local  IP address 121.120.187.27
Nov 12 22:34:27 kimmy pppd[9936]: remote IP address 10.64.64.64
Nov 12 22:34:27 kimmy pppd[9936]: primary   DNS address 58.71.136.10
Nov 12 22:34:27 kimmy pppd[9936]: secondary DNS address 58.71.132.10
Nov 12 22:34:27 kimmy pppd[9936]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-up started (pid 9938)

That's not annoying enough. NetworkManager now marks my network as inactive unless I'm connected either to eth0 or wifi0, which I did not have to do in the past. The consequence? Every time when I start Firefox, it works offline.

I found out that there're other users that are facing similar issue, like in question #28829. I did not use the NetworkManager.conf workaround as suggested in the page since I'm not familiar with the dbus stuff, but looking at the file gave me a clue that running Firefox as root would fix the problem. That was right but who would want to do that? ;-)

A better solution would definitely be altering Firefox settings. Question #96 suggests to set network.online to true but it already is! Then I saw toolkit.networkmanager.disable and toggled it to true, restarted Firefox and.. Yes, this is the solution, it disables Firefox from consulting the NetworkManager.

Read the knowledge base if you want to know more about it.

- yc