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

Unable to open this mailbox

I just set up courier-imap on my machine but I couldn't open the INBOX:

2 SELECT INBOX
2 NO Unable to open this mailbox.

I thought it would be a permission problem but the dirs are set with 700. I also read that it could be the server's date time, which didn't seem to be the case at all.. I then bumped into this thread in the Ubuntu forum to find out that I should have used maildirmake command to create the maildir, bah.

- yc

Ubuntu Hardy Update Freezes during "Generating locales..."

I was upgrading a Ubuntu machine at work yesterday, it froze while it set up the locales:

Setting up locales (2.7.9-4) ...
Generating locales...
en_AU.UTF-8...

(you can go for a coffee now, like, taking a shower and drive down to the town to buy it from Starbucks)

I killed dpkg and restarted the set up but it didn't help. More errors while after packages were being set up:

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.

I didn't get a good response from the #ubuntu channel but some Googling got me to bump into this forum topic. There are a number of solutions being suggested in the topic, what worked for me was by booting into the recovery mode to run the package manager again.

- yc

Can't call method "value" on an undefined value at /usr/share/perl5/IO/Uncompress/RawInflate.pm line 64

I tried to install SocialText Open about two weeks ago and it had then screwed up my CPAN. This is the error that showed whenever I tried to install a module:

Can't call method "value" on an undefined value at /usr/share/perl5/IO/Uncompress/RawInflate.pm line 64

For not being a Perl user (I'm a Java guy after all and a Linux end-user), I went to #perl of irc.freenode.net to seek for some help and I was asked to raise a bug instead in the Ubuntu site. I didn't do it nor tried to fix it after that as I was stuck with other higher priority tasks.

I have a little bit more time this afternoon so I asked Google for an answer and it appeared to have more results this time (two weeks ago, it had just two entries). That basically has concluded that this is a pretty new problem on Debian/Ubuntu.

Removing libcompress-raw-zlib-perl solved my problem, as suggested by nxadm. You may also want to try other options provided by other blog readers if you hit into similiar issue.

Good luck messing with Perl.

- yc

Hardy Heron

Left office with update manager on to upgrade my work machine "Nemesis" to Hardy Heron. Gotta check it tomorrow. :-)

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 8.04
Release:        8.04
Codename:       hardy

However, I have no luck on my home machine "Kate". I have filed a bug report at Launchpad and hopefully I can get some help from the community.

- yc

I'm a Java guy

Learned from KageSenshi that, there is a meme happening at the Fedora Planet, that is to execute this command:

history | awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head

Here's my result:

yclian@nemesis:~$ history | awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
110 ls
109 cd
41 sudo
39 svn
37 mvn
21 cat
12 java
10 $JAVA_HOME/bin/java
9 find
8 sh

svn, mvn, java. What a Java guy.

It's your turn now. :-)

- yc

3 Solutions to GNOME/VNC keyboard mapping issue

I am trying to connect to my workstation in the office via vncviewer and I got scrambled keys in GNOME before I applied one of the fixes below. This has bugged me for more than a week and Google couldn't really give me a good answer until I searched for:

asdf abfh vnc

Try.

It is a bug reported at #108928 and duplicated at #112955. Appears more like a GNOME issue than a VNC issue.

Solution #1: Use vnc4server -extension XFIXES

No, I did not try this because I simply do not want to change my client. The workaround basically requires you to remove tightvncserver and use vnc4server instead. Refer to this and this for more information.

Solution #2: Avoid executing gnome-session

Instead of running gnome-session, run the following commands in your xstartup script or manually in xterm:

gnome-wm &
gnome-panel &
gnome-cups-icon &
gnome-volume-manager &

Suggested by Randy at this link.

Solution #3: Reset the keyboard layout via gconf-editor

This solution works the best in my opinion, suggested by Will at this link. Open up gconf-editor in your X then navigate to:

desktop > gnome > peripherals > keyboard > kbd

You will probably be seeing empty value [] or [us] for the layouts. Enter anything say foo, close the application and your problem should now be fixed.

- yc, one problem in life down

Ubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon with XGL

Upgraded my Ubuntu to 7.10 yesterday, the coolest add-on to it is the support of Compiz Fusion (Compiz effects came in at 7.04 actually). Some of you might have seen the effects, which I will briefly walk through those that I have experienced later before I end this short blog entry.

A few problems that I experienced after the upgrade were:

1. Restricted drivers manager not working. It said something like this:
   

   You need to install the package linux-restricted-modules-* for this program to work.

   Solution: Install the restricted module, e.g.
   

   apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-2.6.22-14-generic



2. Couldn't turn on Compiz effects via System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects. It said something like:
   

   Desktop effects could not be enabled

   Solution: Turn on "Composite" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, i.e.
   

   Section "Extensions"
    Option          "Composite"     "1"

   
   However, before that, you have to install the GL based X server, i.e.
   

   apt-get install xserver-xgl

   
   Then, restart your X server (ALT + CTRL + Backspace) after you have made configuration changes.
   
   
3. IDE and Java applications such as IntelliJ and Netbeans were broken with blank swing interface. I noticed that the menus were still working when I moved my mouse over them.
   
   Solution: Set AWT_TOOLKIT to MToolkit, for instance, add this entry to /etc/profile:
   

   export AWT_TOOLKIT="MToolkit"

   Then, reload the profile (source <profile>) and restart your IDE.
   

To find out what can Compiz effects do, please take a look at this Youtube video. I noticed and managed to discover some newly added effects:

1. Shadow effects
2. Maximize and Minimize effects
3. Blinking/fading effects caused by error/alert, e.g. backspace on an empty text box in Pidgin; filling in invalid phrase in Firefox search box;
4. Wobbly window effects while it's dragged
5. Transparent effects (use ALT + Wheel Scroll on a window)
6. ALT + Tab with real-time snapshots
7. M$ + E to choose desktops
8. M$ + Wheel Scroll to zoom
9. M$ + Right Click to zoom in once

Read these to discover more:

1. Compiz documentation
2. Novel - Xgl on Suse 10.1 (see Xgl Shortcuts section)
   

- yc, impressed

Pidgin was Gaim

Something might have slipped through the cracks of my RSS reader (or simply I wasn't free to read them these days), that I didn't realized that Gaim isn't there anymore. I went to http://gaim.sourceforge.net/ yesterday night, something that I do occasionally as I've been following the development of the version 2.x, shocked by its new name and the change of look-and-feel. As you can read from Wikipedia, all the changes were due to the settlement with AOL, which includes: Gaim would become Pidgin, libgaim would become libpurple, and gaim-text would become finch. The name Pidgin was chosen in reference to the term "pidgin", which describes communication between people who do not share a common language. The name "purple" refers to "prpl", the internal libgaim name for an IM protocol. Gaim 2.0 Beta 6 was the last version to be called Gaim, and Beta 7 was the first version to be called Pidgin. The final version was released on the 3rd of May. Anyway, if you're interested, please follow the links below: Pidgin Official Website: http://www.pidgin.im/ Pidgin Blogs: http://www.pidgin.im/pidgin/news/blogs Download Pidgin: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235&package_id=230234&release_id=505814 Have fun! - yc, sleepy