I recently (yesterday) installed Mandrake 9.1 on my new HP Pavilion ze5354 laptop,
I had taken the time to find the HSF drivers from linuxant.com, they came in rpm format and installed great, I ran hsfconfig as instructed, and the modem was found under KPPP and that was that, I was online with my own linux laptop wahey…

Don’t start clapping yet!

Im a tamperer, so I find the best way to learn things is to mess around with,, them like the kernel (oops)
It screwed up half way through (I must have missed something or I used the wrong setting somewhere) and for some reason it took out my initrd settings cos I couldn’t boot into linux at all.

Rather than trying to fix it I reinstalled Mandrake, the exact same way.
( I figured that I will learn what I had done wrong and how to fix it later, when had linux back online)

Anyway same as before I installed the drivers and received the message that the modem would be on “/dev/ttySHSF0” but when I opened kppp and tried to query the modem I got the message:

looking for modem ,,, unable to open modem.

I went to /dev and looked for /ttySHSF0 it wasnt there, and neither was the symlink /modem.

Back into windows and hit the web, I checked around Google/linux and one or two forums, but I didn’t find anything relevant, being as Im not sure wtf Im looking for I didn’t have any success so I checked linuxant support and found:

Q: I installed the driver, and now the /dev/ttySHSF0 or /dev/modem device is supposed to be there but it doesn't exist.
A: On devfs-based systems (such as Mandrake), the missing device node is often a sign that the driver modules didn't load or initialize properly. Try "modprobe hsfserial", then check the /var/log/messages file or run "dmesg" to see any kernel error messages that could provide a clue as to why loading of the driver failed.

Bingo!!

I ran modprobe hsfserial, dmesg and lsmod here are the results:

Modprobe hsfserial /var/log/messages results

Aug 14 15:56:16 localhost su(pam_unix)[1571]: session opened for user root by root(uid=0)
Aug 14 15:56:39 localhost insmod: Warning: loading /usr/lib/hsf/modules/binaries/i586/mdk/linux-2.4.21-0.13mdk/hsfbasic2.o will taint the kernel: non-GPL license - Copyright (C) 1996-2001 Conexant Systems Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Aug 14 15:56:39 localhost insmod: See tux.org/lkml/#export-tainted for information about tainted modules
Aug 14 15:56:39 localhost insmod: Module hsfbasic2 loaded, with warnings
Aug 14 15:56:39 localhost kernel: hsf_request_port: open failed

Partial dmesg rsults (I can post the full report if required)

Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
CSLIP: code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California
PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
Trident 4DWave/SiS 7018/ALi 5451,Tvia CyberPro 5050 PCI Audio, version 0.14.10h, 15:30:19 Mar 14 2003
PCI: Enabling device 00:06.0 (0005 -> 0007)
trident: ALi Audio Accelerator found at IO 0x1000, IRQ 5
ac97_codec: AC97 Modem codec, id: CXT41 (Unknown)
gameport0: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device at pci00:06.0 speed 2593 kHz
Splash status on console 0 changed to off
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
hsf_request_port: open failed

lsmod results:

[root@localhost root]# lsmod
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
hsfbasic2 116524 0 (autoclean)
hsfserial 26836 0 (unused)
hsfengine 1126348 0 [hsfserial]
hsfosspec 35548 0 [hsfbasic2 hsfserial hsfengine]
ide-floppy 15580 0 (autoclean)
sd_mod 13100 0 (autoclean) (unused)
trident 31796 0 (unused)
soundcore 6276 0 [trident]
ac97_codec 12488 0 [trident]
pcigame 2888 0 [trident]
gameport 3316 0 [pcigame]
ppp_async 9216 0 (unused)
ppp_generic 24060 0 [ppp_async]
slhc 6564 0 [ppp_generic]
af_packet 14952 0 (autoclean)
sr_mod 16920 0 (autoclean)
floppy 55132 0
button 3724 0 (unused)
thermal 8224 0 (unused)
processor 10872 0 [thermal]
fan 2528 0 (unused)
ac 2784 0 (unused)
battery 7008 0 (unused)
nls_iso8859-15 4092 3 (autoclean)
nls_cp850 4316 3 (autoclean)
vfat 11820 3 (autoclean)
fat 37944 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
supermount 15296 2 (autoclean)
ide-cd 33856 0
cdrom 31648 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
ide-scsi 11280 0
scsi_mod 103284 3 [sd_mod sr_mod ide-scsi]
rtc 8060 0 (autoclean)
ext3 59916 2
jbd 38972 2 [ext3]
[root@localhost root]#


I can see that something went wrong from the modprobe & dmesg results but I havent a clue what or why,

Could someone tell why its doing this or even point me in the right direction of more information.
I want to fix this because it worked fine before and I cant understand it why it isnt now.
Obviously it goes without saying that Im real pissed at myself for screwing this up, so any help or guidance here would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance
TBP