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SuSE Linux Help with Vodafone Mobile Connect

This describes a possible solution when an error happens on SuSE Linux machines due to a missing or miss placed password file for the ppp connection

Unfortunately with this error you don't see anything very useful in the way of error messages on screen except for the pop-up error shown below, containing the text "Disconnected from Internet, Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux has given up after trying to connect three times to Internet. This might be provoked by a problem in the configuration or just the fact that there is no carrier". In this particular case that message does not help us locate the problem but what follows will show you how to figure out what's wrong.

It's assumed you have set up a profile in the VMC software as shown below for the vodafone network.

First we want to run the wvdial command used by VMC in a terminal window to see what is really going on. But we want to use the wvdial config file as used by VMC. So run the VMC software as shown below.

This assumes the VMC software is not initially being run as superuser, if it is being run as super user then you won't get the 'password needed' dialog box which is what we need. So make sure your running as a normal user.

• With reference to the figure shown below, click on the Connect button.
• Highlight the /usr/bin/wvdial/............ by clicking on it then selecting CONTROL A . The whole line of text should now be highlighted as shown below.
• Click right on it and select copy.
• Open a terminal window and become superuser ( or precede the wvdial.. command with sudo, depending on your system.)
• Paste into the terminal (click right -paste ) the /usr/bin/wvdial –..... command and hit the return key
• You should now start to see some useful information.

Example of Wvdial failing. As you can see it shows the pppd daemon has died with an exit code of 2. Again checking the meaning of code 2 as returned by the pppd daemon doesn't help much. Code 2 means an error was detected in processing the options given, such as two mutually exclusive options being used. Again, this error doesn't tell us anything very useful.

/usr/bin/wvdial --config /tmp/VMCOvoZNU/VMCOmG-ndwvdial.conf connec
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.56 (abuild@kalman)
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ	
ATZ		
OK
--> Sending: ATZ	
ATZ		
OK
--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E0 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
ATQ0 V1 E0 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0		
OK
--> Sending: AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","Internet"		
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99***1#
--> Waiting for carrier.	
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected.  Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Tue Nov 11 20:54:39 2008
--> Pid of pppd: 15781
--> Disconnecting at Tue Nov 11 20:54:39 2008
--> The PPP daemon has died: pppd options error (exit code = 2)
--> man pppd explains pppd error codes in more detail.
--> I guess that's it for now, exiting
--> The PPP daemon has died. (exit code = 2)

However, if we now take a look at the last few lines of /var/log/messages using the following command that displays the last 10 lines of the file we see something that gives us a useful clue as to where the problem is.

Become superuser before typing this command, (opensuse/Fedora etc) or sudo (ubuntu/kubuntu/xandros etc)

So, in order to view the end of /var/log/messages type the following command.

tail /var/log/messages

Notice the lines that contain [pppd] and more specifically the line mentioned a file that could not be found .. ie /opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Nov 11 20:45:01 linux-26b0 dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67
Nov 11 20:45:01 linux-26b0 dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Nov 11 20:45:01 linux-26b0 dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.200 -- renewal in 1522 seconds.
Nov 11 20:46:10 linux-26b0 pppd[13694]:/opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so:
   cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Nov 11 20:46:10 linux-26b0 pppd[13694]: Couldn't load plugin /opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so
Nov 11 20:47:24 linux-26b0 su: (to root) astr0trek-2020 on /dev/pts/4
Nov 11 20:47:50 linux-26b0 pppd[14115]:/opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so:
   cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Nov 11 20:47:50 linux-26b0 pppd[14115]: Couldn't load plugin /opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so
Nov 11 20:54:39 linux-26b0 pppd[15781]:/opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so:
   cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Nov 11 20:54:39 linux-26b0 pppd[15781]: Couldn't load plugin /opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so

So we need to fix this missing file problem. Here's how to do it.

Locate passwordfd.so

The following commands are run as superuser. Either become super by typing su followed by the password or precede each command with 'sudo'. So first, we determine whether the file 'passwordfd.so' is located elsewhere on the hard disk using the following 'find' command:

>find / -name passwordfd.so -print
 >/usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so

As seen above it found one occurrence of passwordfd.so which we can use to resolve the problem by creating a symbolic link this file.

Create the missing directories

Further investigation shows that directory /opt exists, however directory /vmc and it's subdirectories does not exist. So we first create vmc and it's subdirectories with the following command:

mkdir -p opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4

Create a symbolic link to where the file is actually located.

Next we create a symbolic link in /opt/vmc/lib/pppd/2.4.4/ that links to where passwordfd.so actually is located in /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/ using the following command:

ln -s /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.4/passwordfd.so passwordfd.so

Rerun the wvdial command as superuser and check for any errors. If it works you should see output as shown below.

/usr/bin/wvdial --config /tmp/VMCOvoZNU/VMCOmG-ndwvdial.conf connect		
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.56 (abuild@kalman)		
--> Cannot get information for serial port.		
--> Initializing modem.		
--> Sending: ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E0 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
ATQ0 V1 E0 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0		
OK		
--> Sending: AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","Internet"		
OK		
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99***1#
--> Waiting for carrier.
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected.  Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Tue Nov 11 21:50:00 2008
--> Pid of pppd: 28841
--> Using interface ppp0
--> Authentication (CHAP) started
2
--> Authentication (CHAP) successful
--> local  IP address 10.57.98.165
--> remote IP address 10.64.64.64
--> primary   DNS address 10.205.65.68
--> secondary DNS address 10.205.65.68
--> Script /etc/ppp/ip-up run successful
--> Default route Ok.	
--> warning, can't find address for `www.suse.de`
--> warning, address lookup does not work	
--> Nameserver (DNS) failure, the connection may not work.	
--> Connected... Press Ctrl-C to disconnect Caught signal 2: 
     Attempting to exit gracefully...		
--> Terminating on signal 15
--> Connect time 4.7 minutes.
--> Script /etc/ppp/ip-down started
--> Terminate Request (Message: "User request" )
--> Disconnecting at Tue Nov 11 21:54:43 2008