I am a relatively new, on again and off again linux user. I am running Redhat 9, and I have a modprobe question.

I have a PCMCIA card that has a USB serial port in it. However, it is not advertised, so I need to manually specify it somehow.

I have this command, pulled from another webpage:

# modprobe usbserial vendor=0xf3d prod=0x0112

I am using a bash shell. modprobe responds by saying vendor and prod are not valid arguments. It seems to only want the usbserial part, and nothing more.

So how does this work? I need to get the serial port recognized to send AT commands to the card.

Thanks!
Derek

Looks like I may be in 'safe mode', according to the man page for modprobe. Not sure how to get out of safe mode at the moment.

Looking into it further - any ideas?

Derek

Have you tried to get it to work without the prod and vendor arguments?

Yeah, it doesn't see the usb serial port because 'its not advertised'. For some reason, this secondary diagnostic port on the modem card doesn't tell anyone of its existance. This is why you have to specify it manually. Granted, this is the impression I have.

The usbserial loads, but nothing gets attached to anything.

Seems like if I could just get modprobe to work with these arguments, it would connect.

MAN modprobe says when in 'safe mode':

'There can only be one module name and options of the form "variable=value" are forbidden'

So maybe this is a problem, but I have no idea what safe mode is, how I got in it, or how to get out of it. I am scouring message forums and search engines, nothing so far.

Derek

Well, I'm not keen on Red Hat nor did I have any idea that modprobe had arguments like those, because modprobe's usage file dos not mention them at all.

I am not keen on it either, but that is what was dealt to me here at work.

modprobe has this entry:

modprobe [-adnqv] [-C config] module [symbol=value ...]

That symbol=value thing looks like a valid argument. But not for me.

Derek

Hmm... I was not logging in under GNOME, but 'default'. not sure what that means for Redhat. I logged in under GNOME instead, and now modprobe works with those arguments.

Who knows why, but I'll move on. Thanks!

Derek

Odd. Maybe it's just some hidden and suprising feature of GNOME.