Sir,
Once I installed Fedora core4 to my system. Installation was OK. But my smartlink modem which was connected in the PCI slot (internal modem) was not detected by Fedora. When I replaced Fedora core4 with Suse 9.1 professional, the modem was detected as smartlink smartPCI562 56K modem. Now I am logging to net through this.
What do I have to do in order to detect my modem by Fedora core4?
Please help me. Thanks in advance.
with regards,
appunni

Yours might be a softmodem. They needn't be supported by all distros. Some aren't supported by any Linux distro. For more help, try googling on "linmodems"

Hi,

I got the modem somewhat working after all!!! THank you all!
Well there are a few more things to be figured out.
I'll list what i hoping it would be useful to some other NEWbeee as me...

1.) I have a smartlink internal PCI modem, want to use it in Fedora Core 4 (FC4)

2.) Downloded 'slmodem-2.9.11-20051101.tar.gz' from 'http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink'

3.) Make sure that the kernel source is installed. Check '/usr/src/kernels/'. It is available on the FC4 CD#4.

4.) Read the README file and Compile the driver.
gzip -dc slmodem-2.9.11-20051101.tar.gz | tar xf -
cd slmodem-2.9.11-20051101
make
su
make install

The compilation will sortof make the fraimwork to use the modem, but remember we still cannot USE the modem. This is where i need help. I managed to work around but like to find the best method. Here goes... (I only managed to work as root)
So all the way down login as root.

5.) First we need to insert the driver module into the kernel.
/sbin/modprobe slamr

6.) To make sure the insertion was OK, take a look at massages from kernel.
dmesg
If you see some thing like 'slamr: device 10b9:5457 is grabbed by driver' I did the followingworkaround.

Downloded 'ungrab-winmodem.tar.gz' from 'http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink'
gzip -dc ungrab-winmodem.tar.gz | tar xf -
cd ungrab-winmodem
make
make install
/sbin/modprobe -r slamr
/sbin/modprobe ungrab-winmodem
/sbin/modprobe slamr
Just to make sure
dmesg

7.) OK. Now we need to run the deamen.
/usr/sbin/slmodemd --countrylist
Select you country and again do similar to
/usr/sbin/slmodemd --country=SRILANKA /dev/slamr0
This should start the deamen. So now we have a modem attached to '/dev/ttySL0'
Since this is not very nice to say we make a link
ln -s /dev/ttySL0 /dev/modem
So now we have the same modem attached to '/dev/modem' as well

Note: I had to leave the konsole on which i ran the deamen minimized, and work ahead in another konsole.

8.) Now to check the modem we can use any dialler.
I tried kppp
kppp
I could sucessfully querry the modem. Ahhh!! Great.
But for some reason it crashes saying segmentation fault while connecting to ISP. Did you experience that?

9.) Then I tried wvdial. For that i did:
wvdialconf
man wvdial.conf
vi /etc/wvdial.conf
as told in man file. Remember as told in modem's README we must add 'Carrier Check = no'
wvdial
The dialler managed to setup a connection between my pppd and ISP's pppd. But my browsers did not recognize the connection.

10. ) So i tyied the tools given by Fedora. In gnome (logged as root, slmodemd running in a terminal)
Applications->System Tools->Internet Configuration Wizard->Modem connection ...
Applications->Network Device Control->Activate modem connection...

Thats it!.
OK. Now my questions:
How can i automate the modem load process?
Why couldnt I use kppp and wvdial?
How can i let users other than root?

Regards
vhasun

Hi Vhasun,

I Hadnt tried installation in FC4 with slmodem-2.9.11-20051101.tar.gz but after untarring and unzipping it, in the source directory slmodem-2.9.11***** you would get another directory named scripts. You have to copy slmodemd file from scripts directory to /etc/rc.d/init.d/ directory and then execute the command "chkconfig --level 3 slmodemd on" and "chkconfig --level 5 slmodemd on"

After rebooting the machine the slmodemd works as a daemon automatically and you would be able to use the modem. I presume you would see something like "Starting Smartlink modem" during bootup process. I haven't tried but just guessing.

Wish you a good luck in your endeavour.

Hi arindam.lahiri,

The scripts directory does not contain a file specifically for FC4. But it does have some scripts for Redhat, Mandrake, SUISE, etc.

Is it safe to try those anyway?

Hi vhasun,

You can use the generic one, the one which is in scripts/ folder or perhaps you can try the redhat one also.

Wish you good luck.