Problem with external modem
 

Firstly, I have already posted this on the Gentoo forums (at the weekend) and haven't had a response yet - so just in case I have posted this here. As you can probably guess I am using Gentoo, but I believe this is more of a kernel specific problem. Anyway on with my post - sorry if there is anything that doesn't look like it fits, most was just C&Ped from my other post:

Yep, I know it is the 21st century, but not everyone is lucky enough to be able to get broadband (come Febuary I will...) and so I have a nice external 56k modem. I bought it a while ago especially for this computer because I knew it would run Linux mainly, ahhh the glow of the flash red lights.

Anyway, back to my problem, in Mandrake (kernel 2.4) it worked fine, no problems. In my initial Gentoo install and kernel compilation (2.6.7-gentoo-r[whatever]) it worked ok, but every so often I had to reset the modem before it would open the phoneline when I told it to. This wasn't too much of a problem, but sometimes I use my laptop over my wifi link so I have to walk into the other room to connect.

Today though I upgraded to 2.6.8-gentoo-r10 (from r3) and everytime I tried to connect I had to reset the modem - even after a restart - so I have had to go back to r3. Has anyone else had this problem or know anything about it? I don't want to be stuck with 2.6.8-gentoo-r3 for the rest of my life...

Also when I first installed Linux I managed to set up Mandrake so I could connect by just typing 'ifup ppp0' from the command line - as any user. Anyway, x reinstalls later and I don't know where I found the document, so does anybody know anything about this?

Thanks for your help,
Luca Spiller