I've tried to search for an answer for few months now..haven't succeeded. also, here at LQ I found only one topic which was something like similar to my problem, but I didn't get any help from that either (the answer was quite clearly: buy a working modem....but this one works quite fine, after all). and I didn't reply to it, since it was something like over an year old....but let's get into business.

when I installed linux, I changed modems with my father's older pc; he uses windows (needs some apps in it) so he didn't mind when I gave him my newer (software) pci-modem and took an older (hardware) pci modem, which would work in my linux. I've used it for quite a lot of time now, and started thinking of this little nasty problem some months ago. and here's the situation:

whenever I dial to my ISP, the connection is started ok (it's even quicker done than in windows back in the days) and there's no problem usually. but when I hang it up, or when it's been idle too long and automatically hangs up, the connection dies. ok, that's the way it should happen. BUT when I'd need to get my connection alive again, and start wvdial/kppp/pon/any app, I get only "modem not responding" - caused by a line, that seems to be in use, altough no data goes or comes. so it's like the connection would have been died, but line is open/busy.

the only way I've solved this, is to cut the power off the modem. and because it's an internal card modem, this means I'll have to reboot my PC - annoying. basically this is the only reason why I have to reboot my PC (usually). somebody adviced me to use some commands (minicom or what...well, those sent to modem) to get it _really_ hang up and reset, but they didn't seem to work..?

I'd like to know how to reset the whole thing, so that the line would be open and ready to re-dial when I need, without rebooting my PC. and no, I'm not intending to buy a "new" modem, because after a series of tests this seems not to be hardware-specific in a way of malfunctioning device or something...

so if anybody would know a way to cut off the line completely without any violence or rebooting-stuff, I'd be thankful... I don't need net that much, so there's no sense of getting isdn, adsl, cable or anything...modem does just fine. it's just that I hate when this thing gets zombie.

thanks for any help... I haven't found anything from the net/boards/google yet, that would have helped. could minicom-commands really do the job? even if it seems like the modem is in use, altough it shouldn't be?

after all this time with linux, I've only encountered two great problems - the other one is this, and the other one is my usb-mp3-player, which seems not to have working linux drivers one almost worked, but then it showed up not to..

It seems that although the line is down, for whatever reason, your software or modem is still trying to act as though it is.

What you need to do is to issue a command to 'down' the modem and then to bring it back up.

Unfortunately, I haven't used a modem with linux for over 5 years and so don't know the command.

But...http://cc.jlab.org/docs/services/linux/linux-ppp.html may be of help - it has some modem basics in there, or you could look in your 'start' menu and see if there is a program called kppp in there - that may do the same thing.

The link suggests issuing ifdown ppp0 to take the modem down.

yeah, I guess I'll check out the url...and no, I don't have kppp anymore (used to have back in the days when I was using RH). when I switched to Arch, I only installed (well, the base apps of course) the apps I need, and everything available like in RH

thanks for the url, I'll see if there is something.

EDIT: checked the url out, no help :/ any other ideas, anyone..?