odd behaviour of wvdial

NNP · 08-03-2005, 04:45 PM

Ok, this is regarding my internet connection using wvdial. Im using Fedora core 4 by the way. If i use kppp i can connect to the net fine and everything works away ok but I prefer to use wvdial. For some reason though if i type wvdial at the command line i get

Code:

[nnp@main ~]$ wvdial
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0
--> Cannot open /dev/ttyS0: Device or resource busy
--> Cannot open /dev/ttyS0: Device or resource busy
--> Cannot open /dev/ttyS0: Device or resource busy
[nnp@main ~]$

I thought it might be a permissions problem so to test i switched to root and everything worked fine. The problem then though was i couldnt connect to any sites. I was getting "host not found" messages from firefox and pinging hostnames got me "unknown host" messages,

I set the permissions the same as root so i dont think its that.

Code:

[root@main nnp]# cd /usr/bin
[root@main bin]# chmod 775 wvdial
[root@main bin]# ls -al wvdial
-rwxrwxr-x  1 root root 125736 Mar  3 13:11 wvdial
[root@main bin]# exit
exit

Here is my config file if that helps

Code:

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyS0
Baud = 115200
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
ISDN = 0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Phone = 1890924042
Username = free
Password = free

I know its not a firewall issue as a)I disabled it and b)I can work fine with kppp(if a little slowly)

Any ideas?

NNP

cdhgee · 08-03-2005, 06:03 PM

I had this exact same problem and like you I'd verified all the permissions were set correctly. The only way I found to resolve the problem was to make wvdial setuid root:

Code:

chmod o+s `which wvdial`

That way wvdial will always run with root privileges. Needless to say, this is not ideal and is a potential security risk but after posting to this forum (see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=348563) about the problem the general consensus was to make wvdial setuid root to solve the problem.

NNP · 08-04-2005, 05:30 AM

Wierd, is this a Fedora Core problem? I never had this while using Mandriva.

NNP · 08-05-2005, 02:11 PM

Ok i've done that and its still the same crap. ANy ideas? Here is the output

Code:

[nnp@main ~]$ su
Password:
[root@main nnp]# chmod o+s `which wvdial`
[root@main nnp]# exit
exit
[nnp@main ~]$ wvdial
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0
--> Cannot open /dev/ttyS0: Device or resource busy
--> Cannot open /dev/ttyS0: Device or resource busy
--> Cannot open /dev/ttyS0: Device or resource busy
[nnp@main ~]$ ls -al /usr/bin/wvdial
-rwxrwxr-x  1 root root 139872 Mar  3 13:11 /usr/bin/wvdial
[nnp@main ~]$

cdhgee · 08-05-2005, 02:58 PM

Odd. Looks like the chmod command didn't work. Try it like this instead:

Code:

chmod o+s /usr/bin/wvdial