Re: Modem query.

[Damion Yates <nospam [at] rd.bbc.co.uk>]

On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, R.A.Fletcher wrote:

> Hi, I just installed my first linux distro last week and want a litle
> advice for installing my modem. I run Win98 (ugh) and SuSE 6.1, which
> was installed without problems. Although when I come out of KDE I get
> KDE:Wrong Chracterset! warnings (or something like that) but this
> is not the immediate problem.

As this is as you come out of KDE I wouldn't worry about it in the slightest,
it's probably more of a warning than an error, Linux (all unix systems) often
warn you to console or log files rather than hiding what is going on, this is
why you can diagnose problems so easily in mission critical environments..I
won't go on, this is already a Linux lovers mailing list.

> The Modem is internal, and to get it to work on Win98 I had to set it
> to Plug And Play via a jumper, as when I tried to specify which Com
> Port to use (and all the rest of it) It didnt work.

And people claim things are easy under Windows!

> So the question is, would I be better trying to get the modem to work
> as a Plug and Play device, perhaps by reading the Plug and PLay
> HOWTO, or setting the COM Port and DMA and IRQ witht he jumpers and
> reading the relevant HOWTO for that, noting that it may not then work
> with my Win98. Perhaps losing Internet capabilities on my computer
> altogether. Even if just for a limited time.
>
> Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I suggest both, if you set the modem up with known settings and play with
setserial you should be able to get the modem working pretty quickly under
linux, I'd use minicom, which is hopefully installed by default, once you are
able to type AT and get an OK to the screen you can set about playing with
kppp or yast, or even editing /etc/ppp/options and spawning pppd somewhere,
which is the truth these tools abstract from you. It's basic stuff and
basically matches what you use in windows for ISP connectivity, there are
LOADs of docs all over the net on this task. I've used kppp and it's really
sweet if you don't mind remaining in beginner land for the time being.

The reason I suggest this is because you could end up being unable to access
the internet and have loads of different things that could all be going wrong
from PnP to ppp passwords. If you eliminate the PnP aspect you've got less
that could be going wrong if you do get a problem.

I think it's likely that with enough playing Windows should be able to cope
with forced IRQ's etc, it's just a case of getting them to match what it
wants, so you could keep the system in this state, but..

As you have Win98 you're lucky, you have DOS and with DOS you can use
loadlin.exe to soft boot in to Linux, this keeps all IRQ etc details with the
modem steady and presetup. You don't want to have to boot to windows and
then drop to the prompt every time you need to use Linux so to get PnP
working you can run pnpdump >filename then edit that filename going on the
pnp information / readme's etc and webinformation to create an
/etc/isapnp.conf (copyed from the edited filename you'd created from the
redirection symbol > from pnpdump) file that you can use the isapnp tool to
load PnP irq settings into the modem on a fresh cold boot.

Then once you can cold boot to linux and run isapnp -f /etc/isapnp.conf to
get a working modem (you get OK from an AT in minicom), you can immediately
go online as you'd set that up before. I think PnP is more fiddly than going
on line and the sooner you get the easier early stuff done the better.

The isapnp command would need to be added in to /etc/rc.d/rc.local or
similar, I forget what SuSE does with init scripts, it's SysV style IIRC
though. Yast might provide a way to do this stuff for you.

If you're going on line in Linux, check that you are not running
named/httpd/sendmail and that /etc/inetd.conf contains only lines with #
symbols. This is really heavy security I'm suggesting, but you can slowly
bring daemons back up when you know how you've configured them if you ever
need them anyway.

Damion

--
Damion Yates - Damion.Yates [at] bbc.co.uk

Start your own FREE mailing list at

© 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved