Comments on: A Story For Bedtime

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:29:42 +0000

Well, it took a couple of reboots before I got rid of some initial error messages; I had to recreate my profile; and it now invokes the Gnome Keyring (which drives me up the wall anyway), but it works! Many thanks to all three of you – Alan, Alison & Pablo. Paul.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:42:50 +0000

OK, it has now been built for Hardy and tested on a liveCD. Give it a go and lets see if it works for you.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:13:17 +0000

oh, then again, hang on a bit. The Hardy version hasn’t been updated yet. It should be 0.3.5.2 when it does get built.

By: Alan Bell

Alan Bell — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:55:28 +0000

I am posting this from a webbook running Ubuntu Jaunty and connected to the internet via the Orange dongle using Wader 0.3.5.1-2. Apparently the other dongle issue should be fixed too, please can someone (Paul or others) have a go and feedback results.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:34:41 +0000

Alan, Alison: Just to let you both know I have posted the log files from my webbook requested by Pablo in response to Alison’s questions on the Wader Launchpad page – let’s hope it helps. Paul.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:55:05 +0000

I am about to test some new packages which may fix the issues both with Hardy, and with the Orange HSO dongle on Jaunty. You can always not upgrade something and there is also something called “apt pinning” which I don’t fully understand but should fix something at a particular version. There are old versions of the source code on the wader trac system, it is possible to build older packages from these to downgrade to other versions, however it is generally preferred to fix any regression bugs in the newer versions than try to do downgrades. I do totally appreciate the point that it is your primary and indeed only internet connection.

By: Alison

Alison — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:09:16 +0000

Alan,

Thank you for speaking to Pablo.

From what you say about the UK environment, it seems inevitable that any future versions of the Wader mobile broadband client are liable to be problematic. I can live without SMS and a usage monitor, but I simply cannot risk losing my only internet connection.

Wader version 0.2.3, which was tested extensively for use on UK networks and which works perfectly with the (Ubuntu Hardy) webbook, has apparently been withdrawn from the Wader Launchpad repository.

It would be very helpful if you could persuade Pablo (or whoever makes such decisions at Wader) to put version 0.2.3 back into the Wader Launchpad repository and continue to support it as an alternative version, at least for LTS 8.04 Hardy Heron. (This is what I requested in my query on Wader Launchpad.) Then at least it would continue to be available via Synaptic, presumably.

I am also extremely grateful for all the support you have provided to Ubuntu webbook users and for whatever continuing support you are able to provide in your spare time. Unless Mark Shuttleworth and/or Canonical recognise the urgent need to develop a viable support infrastructure for ordinary home users, not just businesses, in the UK and elsewhere, I fear that Ubuntu will remain the preserve of a fairly small number of expert users and that the behemoth Microsoft will emerge triumphant once again.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:37:16 +0000

I appreciate your situation. Reading these posts I have just tested my dongle again (Huawei E220 on T-mobile) and though it connects, Firefox just gives me the usual error page, “www… could not be found” “the browser could not find the host server”. Thunderbird cannot connect to my mail server either.

Which means that at the moment I am paying £25 a month for a service I cannot access. And somehow I doubt taking the machine back to Carphone Warehouse will get me anywhere, especially since they have now withdrawn the Ubuntu webbooks from their stores. I suspect they would tell me it’s my fault for modifying the software!

Even an idea as to when the next Wader upgrade might be forthcoming would be helpful. Failing that, as Alison has suggested, a way of rolling back the last one.

Again, many thanks for what you do.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:29:55 +0000

Updates are being tested, but not necessarily on webbook hardware and UK dongles. As we discovered, the UK is a particularly hostile environment for mobile data. Elonex are indeed not funding further development of Wader, we are still discussing payment for the initial development. Right now I am significantly out of pocket on the webbook project. I am maintaining this site on my server in my spare time, which is fairly limited.
OK, I spoke to Pablo, apparently it should work just fine on a hardy based machine with updates installed. I have been testing it on Jaunty with an Orange dongle (the only dongle I have, I had to take out an 18 month contract on it to get one, all the others went back to CPW) There were some issues with the hso driver which I am working out with Pablo, but the Orange dongle does just work out of the box when connecting via the new network manager in Jaunty (as it did in Intrepid). The Wader client is more comprehensive than the default network manager as it shows signal strength, tries a bit harder to stay connected and now does SMS.

By: Alison

Alison — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:11:33 +0000

@ Alan,

Re Wader upgrade

I have heeded your advice and refrained from installing the recent Wader upgrade. I look forward to hearing your verdict on version 0.3.5….

Regarding the modeswitch issue, I am now more confused than ever, having discovered by chance that Huawei E169G, which I am using with 0.2.3, is also a ‘composite device’ which requires a modeswitch, so the latter is not an innovation at all. (See: http://www.greenhughes.com/content/using-huawei-e169g-usb-mobile-internet-modem-eee)

I posted a query on the Wader Launchpad website yesterday to alert developer Pablo Marti to the fact that the Wader upgrade is causing problems, but I cannot provide him with the information he wants because I have have not installed 0.3.5.

See: https://answers.launchpad.net/wader/+question/68980

Now that Elonex is no longer funding Wader, I fear that upgrades are not being thoroughly tested prior to their release. (Thanks to your efforts, 0.2.3 works very well!)

As a novice, I had even not considered the possibility of doing backups until I read an Intrepid webbook user’s query on an Ubuntu Forum, prompted by the recent Wader upgrade:

How can I undo an automatic update? http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130815

The design of the Ubuntu OS seems to be based on the (questionable) premise that the latest version of a software package is always the best. There is no system restore feature, no undo button on Update Manager, not even a ‘sudo get downgrade’ command! (I hope that will be rectified in the next LTS.)

I started reading up about the Home user backup and Simple backup packages, but apparently the former isn’t working properly and the latter is quite tricky to use.

Among the six package files for Wader 0.2.3 is one that looks like a compressed archive file, namely wader_0.2.3 orig tar gz, However I don’t know whether that constitutes a backup.

I am intrigued by the mysterious Mobile Connect icon that appears on the desktop when the dongle is inserted before booting up. Right clicking on the icon brings up a menu that includes options to ‘create archive’ or ‘copy [to] disk’. Might it be possible to create a backup of Wader 0.2.3 in that way?