Modem usage permissions
 

Greetings from the land of the mariachi and tequila. (english)
Saludos desde la tierra del mariachi y del tequila. (spanish)

I finally got my Intel 536ep modem working on Linux. Henceforth I will use Windows only for playing Counter-Strike, but I have a problem:

Only root can connect to Internet, if I login as a normal user my modem dials my isp phone number forever and never gets connected. It just keeps dialing and dialing and dialing.
I use kppp.

What permissions do I have to change?
What files do I need to edit?
Where can I get half-Life for linux? Is it free?

Thanks.

Edit the /etc/group file. Generally, you'll want to add yourself to every group but the group you want to add yourself to is called "dialout".

Thank you adz, but I use Mandrake and dialout isn't in groups because it is only used in Suse. Anyway, I Added my users to pppusers and didn't work.

I also checked the file permissions of these files and everything seems ok:
/usr/bin/kppp
/dev/modem
/dev/536ep
/etc/rc.d/init.d/536ep-boot

The last one is a script that launches the modem's modules 536epcore and 536ep. I edited it changing the variable $group to "users" but it didn't work.

Thanks

I use debian and it has a dialout group. Anyway have you added yourself to ALL groups? One of the scripts may be accessing a file which you do no have permission to. If all that fails get a package called "sudo". It allows users in the "sudo" group to execute a program with root permissions. You can write a script to connect you to your ISP using sudo.

PS: If you have a serial modem then check the permissions of the serial port (usually /dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1). Check which group it belongs to. If you have another type of modem then check that port instead.