you are totally right! great! but, how hell do I use setserial? after all I am not sure this is the problem, because kppp does find the modem on ttyS0.

Ok, are you sure you are running the command as root? also sometimes a command won't work *unless* you specify the complete path (in this case #/bin/setserial ttyS0) set serial will probe the device connected to the serial port to make sure the OS can communicate with it. Yes kppp will tell you so, because it is not respondig, thus it hangs waiting for the device to respond (which might as well never happen), in other words, it fools itself. Setserial, besides probing, will tell you in response the the properties of the device you are having problems with as well as setting (I am not quite sure about this) the propper communication with it? Dunno, but it can be of a great help to check it out!.

Also, do you need any special drivers for this modem under Windows? or is it recognized as a generic 56 kbps modem and you can use it right away?

Thanks!

So, I run:
#setserial /dev/ttyS0

I get shell response:
/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4

I assume all is fine.

Next step I run:
#wvdialconfig /etc/wvdial.conf

I get shell response:
ttyS0(*1): ATQO V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 4800 baud
ttyS0(*1): ATQO V1 E1 -- failed with 4800 baud, next try: 9600 baud
ttyS0(*1): ATQO V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 19200 baud
ttyS0(*1): ATQO V1 E1 -- failed with 19200 baud, next try: 115200 baud
ttyS0(*1): ATQO V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up.

Sorry, no modem was detected! Is it in use by another program?
Did you configure it properly with setserial?

I think you have to manually set the baud rate... that is where wvdial fails, no? to do so run:

#setserial baud_base 115200 /dev/ttyS0

or if you want to see what options you can set with setserial run:

#setserial -bv /dev/ttyS0

Thanks, I am afraid the things are going out of the control.

I run:
# setserial baud_base 115200 /dev/ttyS0
and get:
baud_base: No such file or directory

I run:
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 baud_base 115200
and get:
#

I assume, something had been done and run:
#wvdialconf etc etc etc....

and I get again all the same problem.

OK. I visited wvdial website. They tell I need to install wvstreams before installing wvdial.

MDK comes with both wvdial and wvstreams, but the package names are very different from what is available from wvdial website.

I think however that the packages in MDK should be all right. Anyway, I tried to install the packages from wvdial, and there were errors errors errors on make... So, it was never installed.
I use what caem with mdk.

Thanks again.

Funny thing is that setserial does "see" it (well if there's a device connected it'll see it), strange thing is that according to setserial's man page (you can also check it out: #man setserial) setting the baud_rate to 115200 would do something (besides it is the default setting!)

115200 is the default setting:

I run:
#setserial -G /dev/ttyS0
I get:
/dev/ttyS0 uart 11650A port 0x03f8 irq 4 baud_base 115200 spd_normal skip_test

I have read man pages, but it gave no hint.

At this point... I as well tear appart and start to cry, jut like you... Believe, I know how frustrated you are... I've been there myself.

It has been very kind of you to try to help. I am sure somebody else will find your comments very helpful. In my case there are apparently problems that I am not aware of. Many thanks!

I tried my best... Thanks for your comforting... I'll check the arguments to pass to setserial to see if I can figure out what is wrong. Aslo you can check an updated version of wvdial in rpmfind. Do a search, and then give the argument 'Mandrake' to the search string under the system filter. it may be the program is outdated and does not know how to configure your modem... this is my last resource (besides looking into it myself).

Best of luck!

Ok, I don't think that this will help you but here is what used to happen to me, I also almost threw the modem out of the window because of this, and then solved it by pure chance...

Modem - USR Sportster 56K external. Linux - any distro, all behaved the same. At the time I also had Windows XP dual booting on the machine (you'll see later why I mention this).

Install everything, go into KDE, start kppp. Modem recognised, queried correctly, and all is dandy. Set all the options for my ISP, dial, look at the log window - initializing modem (ATZ) - the modem would hang like that forever. I tried all kind of different init strings, none worked. What's more, the modem would 'lock' after this (and I don't mean the lock file, I mean it would 'hang') and the only way to 'unlock' it was to go into XP, and dial out which would somehow reset the modem. Now I am not a total noob, so I tried to ATF the modem in linux, and all other kinds of things, including of course setserial and nothing worked.

Then I tried wvdial, it simply reckognised the modem, and connected to the ISP with no problems. I didn't have to do ANYTHING.

So, the caveat here is that there are clearly some weird things happening in Linux with certain modems. I got lucky, and I was hoping that you would too, so that is why I suggested you use wvdial. It's really shitty that it didn't work for you but don't give up, believe me it is us (you and us that are trying to help you) that are missing something and not the fault of linux. So don't get discouraged, and don't turn your back on linux because of this. Yet.

Cheers,

Vlad.

I have no doubts about Linux, but only about my own skills. Many thanks to all of you!

I have a weird problem now pertaining to connecting through a modem on ttys0.. i installed slack 9 and used dhcp with a crossover cable to my win2k box for internet on the slack box.. interface eth0 for this, the problem im having is when i wany to use ppp0 with the modem attached, it dials, connects, and thats it, it can't send/receive packets.. something must be messed in the routing?

The following example works for me:
# setserial /dev/ttyS3 uart 16550A port 0x0108 irq 10

Of course, you change the ports, addresses and irq's to suit your needs. If it works, edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local and place the setserial as above so you don't need to keep typing it in everytime you reboot. Hope it helps.