Introduction
Modems have plagued Linux users for quite some time. Not because the process of connecting is inherently challenging, but because there are so many brands, models, and minor differences between these brands and models, and perhaps most frustrating of all, very little support from the manufacturers which forces a good deal of reverse engineering.
The following HOWTO discusses work with "hardware" modems only. "Soft" modems now dominate the laptop arena as they are driven almost entirely by software with very little traditional modem hardware, therby reducing the power requirements. These are more difficult to reverse engineer. Effort continues in this space ...
This HOWTO assumes you are going to use KDE's KPPP or the terminal dialer, "WVDial". WVDial may appear daunting at first glance, but it does what Linux has always provided --more control of your hardware with decent feedback. So if all else fails in the graphical environment, take WVDial for a spin.
Using KPPP
- K menu --> Internet --> KPPP
- Provider the root password.
- Select "Setup"
- Select the Accounts tab at the top of the window. Then select New.
- Select "Dialogue".
- Enter your Account information. If you are dialing into a standard account, the IP, Gateway, and DNS will be provided for you. If you
have a static IP with your provider, enter the information as given to you, or contact their support staff for more information. Press Ok
when complete.
- Leave the Authentication scheme as PAP/CHAP unless you have reason to do otherwise.
- Press Ok. Press Ok again. You can always return to the Account information and Edit it as needed, adding phone numbers when you travel or if your local provider offers alternative numbers.
- Select the Device tab at the top of the window. Note that the Modem Device is set to "/dev/modem/". We may come back to change
this
in a moment.
- Select the Modem tab and then Query Modem.
- If the result is that your modem is found, press Ok and then Connect on the subsequent screen.
- If the result is "Sorry, can't open modem," select the Device tab, change the Modem Device to "dev/ttyS0" (the next item in the list). Then switch back to the Modem tab and Query the modem again.
- Continue this testing process until you find a /dev/xxx combination that works. If you do not, you may want to try "WVDial" as mentioned in the next section of this HOWTO.
- If you are successful in Querying your modem, press Connect.
Using WVDial
WVDial is in fact the foundation software used by the graphical modem dialer programs. It is simple, easy to use, and straight-forward. However, it does not conduct any configuration for you nor does it necessarily know which set of arguments will work best for your modem. In this HOWTO, I will present a default configuration.
If you desire or need to change the modem "talk" or "handshaking" configurations, you may visit the website of the manufacturer of the modem, use the KPPP (described above) to test different settings, or discuss this matter in the General Mailing List at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com where others will share their success.
- As root, create a new configuration file:
pico /etc/wvdial.conf [ENTER]
Then add the following to the new file:
[Dialer Defaults] Modem = /dev/ttyS2 Baud = 57600 Init = ATZ Init2 = AT S11=50 Phone = xxx-xxxx Username = my-username Password = my-password [Dialer phone2] Phone = xxx-xxxx [Dialer phone3] Phone = xxx-xxxx [Dialer shh] Init3 = ATM0 [Dialer pulse] Dial Command = ATDP
Where the default "Phone" number may be your local dialup when not traveling and "phone2" may be a number in a different city. In this case, you can change the name "Phone 2" to "sanfran" and add a "9, xxx-xxxx" in the actual Phone number listing to dial out on a hotel line. You can add a very long list of numbers without any problems.
- Save and Exit pico per the instructions on the bottom of the screen.
- From a terminal or KDE/Gnome shell, as root:
wvdial phone2 [ENTER]
The author of WVDial has a good sense of humor about modems, so laugh along and hope for the best, as the author does for you. If the connection fails (due to a bad ID or passwd), you may experience one bug in WVDial which is that it may not allow you to try again until you have killed off the process or rebooted your computer.
But once all is setup, you will connect and maintain a solid connection. As WVDial does not provide audible feedback during the connection process, you may want to monitor the "messages" from a second shell. To do this, as root:
tail -f /var/log/messages [ENTER]
As WVDial negotiates the connection you will observe some indication of this process. But once connected, the IP address of your local machine as well as the gateway will be displayed. As long as you are connected, these will remain active. If you are unintentionally disconnected, you will observe this in the "messages".
- To disconnect, simply press "CONTROL-C" once and WVDial will do its best to disconnect you. /var/log/messsages will display this also.
For more information about WVDial, please refer to the "man pages" as follows:
man wvdial [ENTER]
A user adds his experience ...
Michael Ahearn writes, "I can connect with my modem! Here's what I did:"
- I added th following to "/etc/modules.conf" as par a few newsgroup entries
alias /dev/ppp ppp_generic alias char-major-108 ppp_generic alias tty-ldisc-3 ppp_async alias tty-ldisc-14 ppp_synctty alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate
- Then ran these commands as root (first I turned on logging for kppp and looked at the error - both kppp log and newsgroups suggested these commands):
mknod /dev/ppp c 108 0 [ENTER] chmod 600 /dev/ppp
- There was also a suggestion to do "cat /dev/ttyS0" and watch the dev.
All this seems to have worked. I connect just fine and get an IP address (although it seems as though I have to cat /dev/ttyS0 everytime I want to connect).
This HOWTO was prepared by Kai Staats, Terra Soft
