[AuckLUG] Re: Dialup problem with dialup to Xtra

[Mark Foster]

>> His setup worked fine up till yesterday.
>> 
>> Our attempts to use the Xtra helpline 0800 253 878 then 2 then 2
>> resulted in an Alice in Wonderland conversation with an Oriental
>> gentleman whoses first reaction was "We don't support Linux".
>
> Hi,
>
> that's a shame. IMHO this reaction shows the complete incompetence of
> this helpline. I do not expect any helpline to support Linux and know
> all the different ways of configuring a connection. But they should be
> competent enough to divide the technical login procedure from an user
> interface.

So you're expecting a helpdesk pleb to understand PPP?

Come on. I know engineers and analysts who don't.  A basic-wage calltaker 
at any large ISP is quite unlikely to understand it in detail...

I spent many years working at ISP helpdesks doing dialup support for Win95 
and 2000 mainly (by the time XP came out I'd moved upward in the world) 
and after a coupla years I had enough experience to walk people through 
the use of the post-dial-in-dialogue-screen to manually log in, if 
required.  That was under Windows.

I think I supported maybe a half dozen linux-users in ~4 years.  We didn't 
have a test box (nor any SLA) for linux at any of the ISPs concerned.  The 
dialup process being what it is, however, if you could find the 
appropriate boxes/config files for the username, password, dialup number, 
and some authentication option (chap or pap) - that was it.  Any further 
requirements (as noted by the original poster of this thread) would be 
well over my head in any OS.  (In Windows, blindly clicking Ok tended to 
get past any unwanted post-connect dialogues.  And after the first time I 
came across this, I found out how to disable them.  No idea in Linux).

My point.

1) Don't expect much of a callcentre when it comes to Linux.  The 
knowledge of a UI that only experience gives - together with some well 
drafted scripts - tend to be the way they operate, and without either, 
theyre not going to help.

2) If the symptom is specific to a particular application (or more 
importantly to the way a particular distro is set up to do dialup 
internet) then bouncing a query to a LUG or similar is probably a far more 
useful avenue than the ISP helpdesk as a result of 1) above.  Unless the 
ISP openly supports Linux, or you strike a particularly clooful agent...


IMHO only. etc.

Mark.