[conspire] Breezy/kppp/Netzero

[Rick Moen]

Just hoping to assist, in case one minor point in Daniel's excellent
analysis & explanation was unclear, I'll step in briefly:

> On to the NetZero client. Is it now able to dial and attempt to
> connect? If not, tell me _exactly_ what it says in the little window
> that tells you something is wrong. If, on the other hand, it
> successfully dials and then flakes out while trying to establish a
> connection to NetZero, THEN THIS PHASE OF THE TEST HAS CONCLUDED WITH
> A SUCCESS. Do not interpret failure to establish a connection at this
> particular point in the process as a bad thing, because it is known
> that the NetZero client cannot function properly without root
> privileges, and you have not given it those yet, and should not until
> everything else is verified to be as it should be. When you get to
> that stage, the way I would recommend for specifically you to
> accomplish that would be to right-click on the NetZero icon on your
> desktop, select Properties, click on the Application tab, and edit the
> Command field to begin with "gksudo " so that it says "gksudo
> /opt/whatever" there, and click OK.

John, the "gksudo" utility is a graphical wrapper around "sudo" (the
Substitute User Do command) that lets you run some specified command as
if you were another user -- such as the root user, which is the user
implied by default unless otherwise specified.  

As Daniel notes, up through the present, he's been attempting to have
you do particular steps with the NetZero binary (and other things) for
_diagnostic purposes_.  He's been wanting you to carry out particular,
exact steps and report back with the exact results.

There actually were good reasons why he's wanted you to do those things,
and you'll get a lot better assistance, in general, if you'll cooperate
with people attempting to assist you rather than ignoring (or at least, 
rather freely reinterpreting) their suggestions and requests.  I mean,
presumably you're asking Linux diagnostic help from people you suspect
are better at that than you, right?  ;->

Any, _after_ you've carried out the other steps Daniel suggested, the 
purpose of editing the NetZero KDE icon's Command properties to prepend
"gksudo " is so that -- as the _last_ step of fixing your setup, the 
NetZero dialer is able to operate with root-user authority even though 
you're otherwise running things as user jla.

-- 
Cheers,                   Now, it's time to hack the real world, and let other
Rick Moen                 people write Web sites about it.
rick at linuxmafia.com                                   -- Donald B. Marti