dist-upgrade wvdial cant find modem
 

Have just done a dist-upgrade (not changed from sarge to sid, just updated) which I havent done for a while. (cant normally get broadband) Now wvdial cant find my modem. I get
"cannot open /dev/ttySLO"
"cannot get info for serial port" - didnt think it was on a serial port?
Have a winmodem and use slmodem 2.9.9-alsa. So use an alsa module and the slmodemd binary. Have tried to run wvdialconf and get same error (or very similar) I do have /dev/ttySLO. The owner is root and the group is uucp. I have never checked the permissions on it before, but I dont ever recall seeing the group uucp either, and I run wvdial as root so it should be able to access it. Have tried changing the /dev permissions and wvdials permissions but cant get it to work. Have uninstalled the slmodem, recompiled and installed, and still same error. Dont think its a wvdial problem, but you never know. It will p**s me off, though, that through a dist-upgrade, something has changed the permissions or whatever for my ttySLO or the way other programs can access it or what group it belongs to, without an explicit warning. I like playing with linux but when it changes things that you have no idea what or why, it gets annoying.(yes I am having a bad day) Havent seen anything looking on google that other people are winging about like this, so maybe its me or what, I dunno.

Things are getting worse. Before I used to get errors in my logs about codec semephore not being ready. I had seen posts about people having problems with slmodem not working because of that error, but mine did, so I never worried about it. Now I dont get the errors and my my modem wont work. Have tried using slmodem with the slamr module but I cant even get the module to load now. I never had problems with that before. Getting unknown symbol error. So looks like something funky is going on. Might have to restore from an old image I made. Has got me stumped because there are several things that have changed that seem to be working against me. Tried another update but only got a few extra packages updated and didnt seem to help.

Little update. Although not getting any errors in any logs, upon booting, I get an error relating to the modem from alsa. Goes something like this
/etc/init.d/alsa restrore alsactrl returned with error no state is present for card modem.
Module snd-intel8x0m is getting loaded with seemingly no errors. So, looks like something during the upgrade has bugs in it. Funnily enough, as I stated earlier I cant load the slamr module after compiling the 2.9.9 slmodem package. So dunno if its to do with modprobe or alsa base or who knows what. Will keep this thread going if for nothing else than to give someone else an idea if they have the same problem. (hopefully ill get it fixed :) )

After all the chasing my tail, looks like its just a bug in wvdial. Installed older version and problem fixed. Should look at the simple things first I suppose, before getting carried away. The setserial and alsa errors threw me though. Any way, all fixed.

Nup no good. I can get wvdial to run now, but it cant connect. I couldnt get it to connect in the hotel I was staying in, and thought it might have been bad lines or there pabx. But now im back home with no access to broadband and no internet connection for debian :( Getting error
connected but carrier signal lost retrying
and then I get a whole load of garbage coming across the screen, but no connection. Might have to start trying to find an answer to the alsa not finding state for card modem problem. Must have something to do with that. (maybe, I hope) Gonna be a very painfull process to try and update stuff using dpkg after downloading with windows.

Well, I gave up in the end.
Restored from a previous image and all well.
Am gonna upgrade a few packages at a time to see what it was that actually broke it. Keeping this thread going is more for anyone else that may have the problem than anything else. May take a while to upgrade 300+ packages on dial-up though. Have seen only a couple of similar problems similar to this so far on google, but after a week and it still being broken I had to give in. (am glad I still dual boot, but a week of windows got too much)

Well, upgarded all the alsa packages last night and now I am getting the alsa error again on boot up, but my modem still works. So that, counts out alsa as the problem.