I am completely new to Ubuntu and also completely stuck. I am currently in Ethiopia where there is no ADSL, only a very slow dial-up connection. I cannot get into the Internet. I have read about linmodems, but do not know where to do what.

I received the following double dutch instructions, but what does it mean if you are not into the jargon

"You need to look up linmodem. It is the winmodem part for soft modems. Check that you have infact a soft modem by using the pci vendor and chipset to see what exactly you have.
The other way is a bit odd. You run XP and boot to a virtual machine using the linux partition. Then you can access the soft modem most likely."

So I need something better, more clear, so please give me, in very layman language, detailed information on how to get into the Internet ?

Going through the help in Ubuntu I came across a mentioning of an "Ethiopian server". Does that mean there are people in Addis Ababa that could give some initial training in Ubuntu ? Could you put me in touch with those people ? Please tell me where I should ring or go.

Very many thanks

run this command :
Look for the entry that has the word Modem, perhaps like:

00:0b.0 Serial controller: 3Com Corp, Modem Division 56K FaxModem Model 5610 (rev 01) (prog-if 02 [16550])
Subsystem: 3Com Corp, Modem Division USR 56k Internal FAX Modem (Model 2977)
Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16

Then search the internet to see if your model is supported (i.e. not a winmodem)

Yes, I agree those instructions you were referring to are not clear. A winmodem is basically a device that depends on proprietery Windows software to complete it's tasks.

HTH

This is difficult, because you need the internet to find out information about getting onto the internet, so I've extracted this information
-------------------------------
Using the Creative USB Modem with Linux
Introduction
The Creative Modem Blaster USB DE5670 is a capable external modem that works well with all the versions of GNU/linux that I've used. However, it takes some work configuring the OS to recognise the modem before it can be made available for normal users. When using the 2.4 series kernels, I just made the modem device nodes once by hand, but with 2.6, comes the dynamic udev filesystem so I tried to add relevant entries for automatic device creation.
Using the Creative Modem Blaster with 2.4 series kernels
As root, the superuser, type the following commands,

mknod /dev/ttyACM0 c 166 0
ln -s /dev/ttyACM0 /dev/modem
modprobe cdc-acm

Then, as a normal user, you should be ready to configure and use kppp where you specify that your modem is available at /dev/modem
Using the Creative Modem Blaster with Mandrake 10.2 Limited Edition 2005
Not really knowing what I should be doing, I tried a few approaches, found an imperfect solution and may have done some work unecessarily. The details are shown below.

echo 'ln -sf ttyACM0 /dev/modem' >> /etc/udev/conf.d/modem.conf
echo 'KERNEL="ttyACM0", SYMLINK="modem"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/modem.rules

and added the USB device information to /lib/modules/2.6.11-6mdk/modules.usbmap

cdc-acm 0x0003 0x1690 0x0101 0x0000 0x0000 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x0

However, this is not a permanent or approved solution because this usbmap file is overwritten each time that kernel module dependencies are regenerated with the "depmod" command. I don't know the correct place to store the USB device info so it is regenerated by depmod - somewhere in the kernel source ?

The situation is also puzzling because even before the usbmap file was updated, and when usbview listed the modem in red (unknown), there was still one command where the modem was listed as being of the correct communication type "cdc-acm" but this information wasn't being used anywhere as far as I could tell ?

usbmodules --device /proc/bus/usb/002/008
cdc-acm

USB Identification Data
This is what usbview shows about my modem:

Creative Modem Blaster USB DE5670
Manufacturer: Creative
Speed: 12Mb/s (full)
USB Version: 1.00
Device Class: 02(comm.)
Device Subclass: 00
Device Protocol: 00
Maximum Default Endpoint Size: 8
Number of Configurations: 2
Vendor Id: 1690
Product Id: 0101
Revision Number: 1.00
-------------------------------

from http://www.littlest.co.uk/support/cr...nux_guide.html

One brand is mentioned, Creative modem blaster.