Hi,

After getting increasingly frustrated by MS Win, I recently decided it was time to get rid of it. So I installed Linux. Cold turkey; I threw away my MS stuff and now have a Linux only PC (I only have one PC).

I installed Ubuntu (Linux kernel 2.6.something) and I love it. It gives me the feel I used to have with my Amiga.

It all works like a charm. Except for ... my modem.

I own an Alcatel Speedtouch 300 USB and I just can't seem to get it installed correctly. I tried different methods, from different sites and forums, but with no luck so far.
I'm a complete and utter noob to Linux, so I'm afraid I haven't the slightest clue as to where to begin searching for what is going wrong. I follow instructions but most of the time don't know what I'm doing and why.

Anyway.

When booting, at some point Linux sometimes says to me:

modprobe FATAL Error inserting speedtch (/lib/modules/2.6.8.1-3-386/kernel/drivers/usb/misc/speedtch.ko): unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter

Obviously, there's something going wrong here.

What did I do? Basically I followed this ~pschram/english.html at xs4all.nl (sorry I'm not allowed to post the complete URL because this is my first post). However, since I couldn't find speedtouch-1.2-beta2.tar.gz, I used speedtouch-1.3.1.tar.tar, which I could find (evidently). Perhaps there's something going wrong here and am I working with a driver version that is not compatible with the microcode...?

When I run the script start-adsl, I get the following:

SIOADDRT: No such device
using channel 1
using interface ppo
connect: pppo <--> /dev/pts/1
Modem hangup
connection terminated
waiting for 1 child process...
script /usr/local/sbin/pppoa3 -m 1 -c -v 2 -vpi 8 -vci 48, pid 4513
script /usr/local/sbin/pppoa3 -m 1 -c -v 2 -vpi 8 -vci 48 finished (pid 4513), status = 0xff

VPI and VCI should be correct (I'm in the Netherlands).

This is my start-adsl:

# ! /bin/bash
/usr/local/sbin/modem_run - f /usr/local/lib/mgmt.o -m
/usr/sbin/pppd call adsl &
sleep 5
/sbin/route add default ppp0

This is my /etc/ppp/peers/adsl:

debug
kdebug 1
noipdefault
pty "/usr/local/sbin/pppoa3 -m 1 -c -v 2 -vpi8 -vci 48"
nodetach
user "<my login>"
kdebug 7
noaccomp
nopcomp
# nomagic
noccp
# passive
# icp-echo-interval 5
# icp-echo-failure 30
# persist

I reckon the #-sign means it's commented out.

Then I have an /etc/ppp/options.adsl (options is empty as it should be according to the instructions):

noauth
use peerdns
lock
noipdefault

I checked /etc/ppp/pap-secrets and it contains my login an password, separated by a * and terminated by a *. That seems to be ok. /etc/resolv.conf also seems fine by my; I've got the correct nameservers.

Well, hope this is enough info for the moment and hope that there's someone out there who can help. I don't have any problems with spending loads of time getting to learn Linux and tweaking and puzzling and all that, but my internet connection is very important - it should work. If I don't get it to work in a reasonable amount of time, I'm afraid I will have to return to MS and I'm not looking forward to be forced to do that...

Sincerely,
René.

what does dmesg say? what does lsusb say? what are the parameters that are added to the install?

Hi Ron

lusb:

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 06b9:4061 Alcatel Telecom Speed Touch ISDN or ADSL Modem
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

I didn't have the time to type over everything in dmesg and I didn't have a floppy handy either.

I did however find out what was causing the error (ie: I found out what line in the scripts was being executed):

/sbin/route add default ppp0

For what it's worth...

Since I tried so many different things, I decided it might be wise to re-install Ubuntu. So I did.
I'm going to try some other things this evening; hints more than welcome.

Sincerely,
René.

Online!!

Well, I managed to get online. It's not perfect yet, but hey -- now the connection is there, I've got the time to start fine tuning and seeking out how to get things a bit better step by step. Getting online was mandatory and acute; for everything else I can afford to take some time.

So. What I did to get things going, is a combination of things I read on different boards. I ended up using the Steve Parker method (http://speedtouchconf.sourceforge.net/). However, I had to comment out the ochi-lines in the script; they were giving me a FATAL ERROR and I couldn't get on-line. When I commented things out, everything was working fine.
Man, what a rush when I saw the words "Hey, I can see te net from here!"

I've still got one problem: when I shutdown and boot again, my ppp0 is gone. That's not an enormous problem, because I now know what to do to get things going as long as I don't shut down. But naturally I need to fix this problem. Well, like I said...: I've got time now

Recapitulating, it seems that my major mistake was mixing stuff from two different kinds of installment. But I can tell y'all first hand that the Steve Parker script is compatible wit Ubuntu 2.6.(I don't know the rest by heart and am not at home right now).

Sincerely, and thanks for the assistance,
René.