Guido Diepen wrote: > On Thursday 13 August 2009 18:39:43 Adam Williamson wrote: > >> On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 12:04 +0200, Guido Diepen wrote: >> >> one recurring problem we encounter frequently is that people have >> problems with SynCE, it is not working for them and often it turns out >> that they have a firewall running. Currently this means that they have to >> find this information on some forum, or that they have to find this by >> asking questions on the mailing list or IRC channel. >> >> On Mandriva they can run the firewall configuration tool and click the >> special box for synchronizing with Windows Mobile devices. :) >> > Would be nice if this would be cross distro :) > > >>> Unfortunately I am not very familiar with all the details of how >>> synce-hal works, but would the following extension be possible (and if >>> so, would you guys think it would be useful). >>> >>> When synce-hal detects a new device, it sets up the interface via DHCP, >>> after which it sends the UDP packet to the device which will have the >>> device initiate all subsequent connections. >>> >> I'm not sure that would really work. There has been some discussion on >> Fedora's development lists recently about some kind of 'firewallkit' >> which would allow (trusted packaged, obviously) applications to open >> some firewall holes on installation in some way, but it seems to have >> petered out, and it may not be applicable to all distros even if written >> (I think the end of the discussion was focussing on ways to do it via >> SELinux). In the absence of that, better documentation is probably all >> we can do :/ >> >> What would be nice is a firewalling system that's smart enough not to >> apply the firewall to an rndis0 interface when the connected device is a >> Windows Mobile phone in ActiveSync mode (this is in fact all information >> that's available to the system). That might be a complex patch to write, >> though. >> > > One problem with rndis0 is that it is not always called rndis0. Currently on > my computer it is renamed to eth1. > > The thing is that with this timeout I do not want to change anything to > firewalls or whatever, but with this in my opinion we can signal the user > that there are connection problems and that this might be related to a > firewall. In the message we could tell the user to try first with legacy > (=ppp) mode and if that does not work, check firewall settings. Furthermore, > we can mention that for the firewall settings he must look at the > documentation of the distro running. > > It would be nice if there would be one generic way cross distros to have > SynCE > open some ports in the firewall, but while that is not present, my suggestion > is to at least provide the user with some more instructions. > > Kind regards, > > Guido Diepe As an aside, the situation on SuSE is that we have a /etc/sysconfig method of adding services (interface+ports) to the SuSEfirewall2 configuration dialog, though it is still up to the user to ultimately enable it. It's not included in the rpm's at the moment because I hadn't figured out an safe way around the interface name changes without asking for open SynCE ports on all interfaces. Adam, what is the solution on Mandriva?
But anyway, I am not aware of any cross-distro firewall solution ... would be a nice project along the lines of PolicyKit and PackageKit though. But +1 for a message informing the user that one reason for why the connection failed might be a broken firewall configuration. There isn't really much else SynCE can do AFAICS. Maybe include information about necessary ports in the man pages? Regards, Tejas <MasterPatricko> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ SynCE-Devel mailing list SynCE-Devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/synce-devel
