I am running SuSE 9.2 Professional with a dialup connection. There were lots of hassles in establishing that connection when I first put it together. It appears that both SuSE and Redhat/Fedora have managed to screw up both Kppp and Kinternet when they upgraded to the 2.6.x kernel. Some Googling solved that problem, and the connection runs just fine.

The other day, I was downlading some updates from a SuSE ftp mirror. My connection died in the middle of the session. For some reason, my modem command configuration was rewritten. I had no Linux internet access. Despite uninstalling and reinstalling both my account and modem, there was no success. I thought that I was going to have to do a reinstall of the Operating System.

Then I recalled that I had an old version of Knoppix laying around. In this particular case, it was Knoppix 3.6. I inserted the Knoppix CD and rebooted the system.

Using Knoppix's Kppp application, I set up a dialup account. While the modem did connect, I was unable to cruise to any websites. Not important. What I WAS able to do was have a peek at the configuration of my modem.

I copied down the settings that Knoppix determined, and copied them to the SuSE Kppp modem command utility. Not only was my connection restored, but I am now running a silent modem...an added benefit.

The Moral of this story is that Knoppix is a pretty good diagnostic tool when one runs into trouble. The second Moral is that one should NOT try to download 89 files at 279 MB on a dialup connection.

Regards,

Billgatus

I always have a knoppix CD with me where ever I go. That, and BartPE, have gotten me out of several situations at several job sites without a scratch.