[AuckLUG] Re: Dialup problem with dialup to Xtra

[John O'Gorman]

On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 16:05, Mark Foster wrote:
> >> 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...
> 
> 
I accept all this but the problem here was not a Linux problem.
The Linux chat scripts had worked continuously for over a year until
thursday.
My friend had not changed his configuration.
To me it is obvious that the ISP or the Telephone exchange has changed
something.
We explained all this to the Filipino help desk people. They for their
part had no direct contact with the Auckland exchanges  or with the ISP
servers, and seemingly could not get access to the Xtra configuration
files.

I have subsequently learned this morning that another expert friend of
mine with a similar laptop system could not log in in a Whakatane motel.
His system has worked reliably for over a year as well.
His Kinternet script log shows a slightly different error (it says BUSY
when the phone line seems to be giving a ring tone).

regards
John O'Gorman
> IMHO only. etc.
> 
> Mark.
> 
> 
> 
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