Serial Dialup Internet

I bought an Aspire One running Linux for my parents who are in their 80s primarily for occasional internet use and chose this platform because it is easy to learn and compact so it won't take up much space in their rather small accommodation.

However, they do not have broadband and it would be uneconomical for them to have it.

I acquired a Vodafone 3G mobile internet device but the signal is too poor in their home for it to present a reasonable internet experience for them.

I then bought a USB dialup modem which specifically says that it works with Linux but it does not work. It appears to me that perhaps its drivers have not been kept up to date since their name embodies that of the operating system and the actual o/s version numbers are ahead of those for the modem drivers.

So I'm finally resorting to a Pace serial dial up modem connected to the A1 through a USB serial port.

Now I also have an Asus EEE PC running Ubuntu on which the USB serial port and Pace modem combination works perfectly. However I am unable to get them to work on the A1 and I put this down to lack of familiarity with Linpus. (The USB modem mentioned above does not work with the Asus EEE PC either).

Can anyone please advise me on...

• How do I tell whether or not the A1 has recognised the USB/Serial adapter and which port it has acquired[/*:1tcdunvv]
• How do I tell if my modem is being detected or not? It does not seem to appear as /dev/modem and the devices that it appears as on my Asus machine are not present either. These are /dev/ttyUSB0..n[/*:m:1tcdunvv]

Any guidance as to how to figure out the USB-Serial adapter or the serial modem itself would be much appreciated.

Kind Regards
Steve

 

Well, I'm replying to myself :lol: In case you're wondering why, it's because I have some answers that others might find useful.

Firstly, it would appear that Linpus is somewhat stripped down to make it run well on a smaller box, so it doesn't have many of the standard drivers, and in particular it doesn't have the USB-Serial drivers. So I was unable to get my Pace modem working as per my thread above.

So I returned to consider how I might get the Pluscom USB Analog modem to work.

Here is what I found...

After installing the drivers that came with the modem it is necessary to run dgcconfig which, amongst other things, will recompile some components.

For the compilation to work I had to prepare some missing things...

Firstly to acquire portions of the operating system source and set it up so that DGCCONFIG can compile against it:-

wget http://ftp.twaren.net/Linux/Linpus/Aspi ... 23.9lw.zip
sudo unzip -d /usr/src -x linux-2.6.23.9lw.zip
sudo ln -fs /usr/src/linux-2.6.23.9 /usr/src/linux
sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/src/linux

Having done the above I ran the dgcconfig command but it failed. The log showed that it is trying to run a command called install which does not exist.

The install command does not exist on the A1 and it was needed in order to configure DGCCONFIG. So I copied it from /usr/sbin on my EEE PC to the A1 (same location) and DGCCONFIG ran successfully to completion. The modem appeared as /dev/ttyACM0 and /dev/modem pointed to it so could be used instead.

Finally it looks like the GNOME-PPP process must be run with root permission in order to be able to dial. This is unfortunate because my mother (whose machine it is) is not a computer-literate person and it is not a good idea to give her the root password and also it is one extra piece of information that she needs to use.

So my final remaining problem (not yet solved) is why, when gnome-ppp offers to run unprivileged, does it not work? I checked and the /dev/modem has full access from all users, but it says that the modem is in use or not available. Yet when running it with the root privilege it works ok.

Kind Regards
Steve