Introduction
It is imperative to note this document discusses work with "hardware" modems only. While "soft" modems now dominate the laptop arena as they are driven almost entirely by software with very little traditional modem hardware, thereby reducing the power requirements, they are more difficult to reverse engineer and therefor seldom supported.
This HOWTO suggests you use the Network config tool or if that failes, 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 Network
Use the Network configuration tool:
YDL Menu --> System Settings --> Network
... and follow the on-screen configuration wizard.
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:
nano /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 nano 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
