Laptop modem detected, not dialing: what hanven't I tried?
 

I recently installed SuSE 9.2 on an hp pavilion ze4200. It detects my modem but will not dial. pppd exit error code is 2, but my dialup properties are correctly set in YaST: no conflicts as the error might suggest.

I have heard of people solving this same problem in one of three seemingly miraculous ways: installing all of the Mobile Computing package, uninstalling that very same package, or the modem just starts working. Didn't work for me.

I'm in the proccess of checking if the Conexant drivers may fix my problem, but here are the details, just in case anyone has any other ideas...

from /var/log/boot.msg --

Setting up network interfaces:
unused modem0
modem0 Startmode is 'manual'
skippedSetting up service network...........done

YaST autoconfigured the modem to be /dev/ttySL0 but
ls -l /dev/TTYSL0 yields a does not exist message. Yet an ls -l /dev/modem tells me that it is linked to /dev/TTYSL0. So haphazardly, I ls -l /dev/ttySL0 and i see it points to /dev/pts/3. When I manually enter /dev/ttySL0 into my config as the modem, the system freezes when I try to connect to the Internet (obviously I changed it back).

I'm a relatively experienced user, but this is the first time I've installed on a laptop. I installed the smartlink update patch for my modem driver from SuSE, but still the same problem. Suggestions?

Leave /dev/modem linked to ttysl0 and try running slmodemd as root from a shell to see what to output is. You might need to use the alsa option to slmodemd if you modem is the same as mine.

Updates
 

I will try slmodemd. Last night I tried 'slmodem' since that is what scanModem told me: hopefully this one letter will solve my problems... just a typo in the scanModem output? scanModem recommended the alsa option as well, and listed specifics in a text file under the Modem directory it created.

It also had me modprobe snd-intel08xsomething or other, which I did.

Hopefully, this works -- a preemptive thanks: thanks.

slmodemd - device busy
 

Firstly, when I slmodemd as root, it tells me that the modem device is busy. Apparently, I also need to update my ALSA to complete this little process.

As far as I recall Suse 9.2 slmodemd doesn't come with alsa compiled in, maybe SUSE update changes this, and when I was using my modem had to compile smartlink myself with alsa support. SUSE 9.3 comes with it already compiled in though. (This is all assuming that's the problem of course :) )

slmodemd cannot open device
 

Having installed the most recent slmodemd and ungrab-winmodem packages from source, I have had a small amount of success, though still no Internet connection from Linux. Here's what's happened, painstakingly copied from the laptop screen to this one by hand, as the laptop has frozen while trying to connect again.

# rmmod slamr
# modprobe ungrab-winmodem
# modprobe slamr
# /usr/sbin/slmodemd --country=UNITEDSTATES /dev/slamr0
SmartLink Soft Modem: version 2.9.9d May 31 2005 16:24:37
bad country name 'UNITEDSTATES', using default by code!
symbolic link '/dev/ttySL0' -> '/dev/pts2' created.
modem 'slamr0' created. TTY is '/dev/pts/2'
Use '/dev/ttySL0' as modem device, Ctrl+C for termination.


However, KInternet denies me use of itself, and I must go into YaST to set up my connection, which I do. On the terminal this displays ...

[1]+ Stopped /usr/sbin/smodemd emd --country=UNITEDSTATES /dev/slamr0

So I run it again and get:

error: mdm setup: cannot open dev '/dev/slamr0': Device or resource busy
error: cannot setup device '/dev/slamr0'

So, out of frustration and nearly lost hope, I click KInternet to connect... and freeze the system.

(Note for Linux purists: I tried reinstalling Windows XP -- which came with the laptop, my fiancee's -- but there is no appropriate modem driver to be found. Searching, I see that hp does not provide one! As yet, none of the others I have tried have worked either.)