I spent about an hour this morning trying to get PDAnet to work on my MacBookPro the way it once did. Had I not magically missed the question in the FAQ that addresses the issue, I could have saved myself 58 minutes of a Sunday morning.

PDAnet allows you to use your mobile phone as a modem. So, when there’s is no wifi, or when you don’t want to pay a hotel $25/day to use their stinking wifi, you can plug your mobile into your laptop via USB (PDAnet also supports Bluetooth, but as with every other Bluetooth app, it is as close to impossible to get to work as its evil masterminds could achieve) and surf the Web via your cellphone connection. Whatever data charges your cellphone company inflicts will apply.

PDAnet had been working like a dream for me. I had sprung for the paid version so that I could access secure sites. I was in tethered heaven. Then it stopped.

I uninstalled, redownloaded, rebooted, and tried again … and again and again. I wouldn’t get error msgs anywhere except in my browser when I tried to go to a site. The ping command in my terminal told me it couldn’t resolve the host. Weirdly, Console told me “before listening on daemon socket” and “CDaemonCon 2 exits.” These were only weird because the first has a single unhelpful hit at Google and the second has none. None! It’s an error message from another planet!

Then I re-checked the PDAnet help page. And there it says quite plainly: “Mac When connecting the PdaNet menubar icon keeps blinking and I have no Internet.” The explanation:

This is because the Network Interface create by PdaNet is not added on Mac automatically for some reason.

Try to open Networks Preferences and click on “+”, then select the new Network Interface the biggest “en” number such as en2 or en3 and click “Apply” with DHCP selected.

These instructions are almost correct. So, go to System Preferences, and then to Network. Click on “+” at the bottom of the list of connections on the left. Choose “Internet adaptor” from the list. “Internet adaptor” will have some number after it. After accepting, that connection will show up in the list on the left. Make sure that the choice to the right of “Configure IPv4” says “DHCP.” You should be good to go.

PDAnet rocks when you remember to reading the effing FAQ.

D’oh.

Categories: tech dw