Greetings-

I am a new Linux user having trouble configuring an external US Robotics Modem. I have installed both Redhat Fedora 8 and Kubuntu on seperate hard drives (I unplug one drive & plug in the other depending on which distro I want to run) on the same computer (Pentium 3, 1000 mghz, 512 gigs of ram, nvidia 5500 vid. card, US Robotics 56k external modem on serial port, the Kubuntu Kernal is 2.6.24-16 Generic, Fedora is
2.6.23.1-42.fc8

I get the same messages from lspci-

gary@gary-desktop:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset Host Bridge and Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801AA PCI Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801AA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801AA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801AA USB Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801AA SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801AA AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:04.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5500] (rev a1)

Here is what I get from wvdial


gary@gary-desktop:~$ wvdial
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60
--> Cannot open /dev/modem: No such file or directory
--> Cannot open /dev/modem: No such file or directory
--> Cannot open /dev/modem: No such file or directory

Let me know if you have any ideas.

Thanks

Gary Esterly

WVdial says it can't find /dev/modem. Since you have an EXTERNAL device, it's plugged into a serial port. That serial port is probably /dev/ttyS0 (or something similar).

That's what you should look for. Look in the /dev directory, for devices like /dev/ttyS0 (for the first serial port, /dev/ttyS1 second, etc.). Either configure wvdial to look at that device, or make a symbolic link from /dev/ttyS0 to /dev/modem.

Some not bad advice, but the way I see it, it's for an experienced Linux user. Did you notice the first seven words of the OP's post?

Although I don't have Fedora 8, I'm sure it's not far off from Fedora 7 where you would go through Administrator,s tasks or "System" to find "network configuration". It's fairly straight forward to set up a dial-up connection this way in Fedora with KDE. Unfortunately, I install Fedora with KDE desktop only, the default installation will install a Gnome desktop which I'm guessing you have. Therefore I cannot give specific details on finding the network configuration utility in Gnome.
In Kubuntu, try kppp (graphic dialer utility found in "Internet" section of main menu) and direct it to /dev/ttyS0 instead of /dev/modem during configuration. Then hit the "query modem" button to see if it is found, if not, try some other devices. One thing about kppp is that it has a blank init2 field in modem commands section. If you venture this way and see that, add the line below in there, the same commands wvdial uses:
Or you can do as the previous poster mentioned and direct wvdial to a different device. This would require you to edit (change) the /etc/wvdial.conf file as root and replace /dev/modem with /dev/ttyS0. The best way to set up wvdial is to issue the command as root: wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf and it will look at all the ports and may find your USB modem if it's turned on. If it does, you'll still have to edit the /etc/wvdial.conf file to include your user name, password and ISP phone number after it finds your modem.

Wvdial usually has a couple semicolons or something at the beginning of those three lines for your user name, password and phone number, those semicolons have to be removed. Below is a sample of what the contents of the file should look like.