Slack 10 and dial up modem setup

[vwgtiturbo]

Hey guys. I decided the other day that I was never going to learn *nix while I still depended on Winblows, so I pretty much gave Win the boot (except for Dreamweaver). I downloaded and installed Slack 10 the other day, after a LONG hiatus from Slack (too busy with new job and kiddo being here for the summer). Basically, I installed Slack with no dial up modem, and only configured it for my cable connection at the house (which works, no problem). Well, I take this system to work everyday, and at work, I only have access to dial up. The modem that I installed years ago was a Winmodem, so I ordered an AMI-IA56 hardware modem. I physically installed the modem, and am now trying to setup a dial up connection. I read a doc from linuxpackages.org, and it was way off... either it was written for another distro, or it was old. In any case, I ran ppp-setup, and went through that spiel. However, now that I finished that, I have no idea how to get the thing to dial out. Yeah, this is basic, but I have always been spoiled by cable (at least, with Linux). Any help or point in the right direction would be awesome. Thanks.

[vwgtiturbo]

Well, at first I was trying ppp-setup, but then saw KPPP when in KDE, so I tried that... Yeah... I don't think that worked... I had to do it manually instead of with the wizard because for some reason, the US is not listed on the country list?? Anyways, that was a confusing mess.

[SkyNet]

vwgtiturbo,

I completely understand you. I have yet to run into the modem woes as I'm spoiled by cable. I'm unable to do any testing myself, but please try this link out to see if it might help you. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/ISP-Connectivity-2.html#ss2.1

This might help you as well http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO/tools.html

alastair notified me of these links which might also prove useful for you. http://www.gnome-ppp.org/ and http://www.rcub.bg.ac.yu/~bruce/gppp/

[vwgtiturbo]

What a mess... Does Slack 10 still use cuaX, or do I look for ttySX? I tell you what... I have been trying to install the drivers, and that hasn't even gone well for me, so even if I do get ppp set up, I won't be on the net with this machine for a while...

[vwgtiturbo]

Okay, nevermind my post above... I compiled the driver, but when I went to make install, it didn't work. Something about a directory not existing and not being able to detect my distro. {EDIT: Previous statement was referring to the installer's inability to set the system to load the driver module automatically on bootup. Actual compilation of driver DID succeed}
So, there were some instructions from Intel that came with the driver, and it said to do five steps if the script didn't work for you. I had to insmod the compiled module (keep in mind, all of this is greek to me, so what a treat today was), then "mknod /dev/536ep c 240 1" (this is an Intel 536ep based modem), then link /dev/modem to /dev/536ep. FUN STUFF!! After this, I kept trying to use KPPP, and could never get it to work. It kept saying that it was timing out trying to start pppd. Finally, I wondered if I would have any better luck with pppsetup at the terminal. Yep. I set it up that way, and started the ppp connection with ppp-go. It works! Now, I don't have to do anything when I boot up, except load the module (insmod) then run ppp-go. My question is this...
Every time I boot, I have to insmod the modem module. Then I have to run ppp-go. Is there a way to allow my regular user to do this? I was thinking of doing a shell script to insmod, and run ppp-go, but you have to be logged in as root to run ppp-go. Let me know what you think...

[SkyNet]

You can put insmod module in /etc/rc.d/rc.local and it will execute upon boot. About ppp-go I think you can chmod ugo+x /location/to/ppp-go and that should allow a normal user to execute it.

[vwgtiturbo]

Sweet! I tell you what... this minor victory is what I needed to get this ball rolling. Every time I have tried to migrate, I always have some sort of setback. It gets a little discouraging after a while, and I end up going back to Win. This is definitely what I need...
It's odd though... When I first tried pppsetup, it didn't work. When I first tried KPPP, it didn't work. I realize now that it was because I didn't have the module inserted. BUT, what struck me as odd is that when I first fired up KPPP, none of the settings from pppsetup were in there. It's almost as it KPPP and pppsetup didn't jive. I would assume that they are supposed to. I always thought that the GUI utilities were the same as the CLI, but you just had a nice interface to look at. I first noticed this when I ran Red Hat 8 and 9, but this is the first time I have seen it running Slack.
Thanks for the boot tip. I have always wondered how I would go about that. I haven't gotten that far in my UNIX book yet

[vwgtiturbo]

Okay, I put insmod xxxxx into the rc.d, and that works great. When I try to run ppp-go as a normal user, I get the whole 'permissions' thing, so I changed the permissions of /usr/sbin/ppp-go. THEN, I get an error about not being able to access /etc/ppp/options, so I changed the permissions of that. Now, when I try to run ppp-go as a normal user, I get this message:
"ron@slacker:~$ /usr/sbin/pppd: must be root to run /usr/sbin/pppd, since it is not setuid-root"
I tried to change those permissions too, not realizing the setuid-root, but unfortunately, I have no idea what this thing is talking about. I have seen setuid before when compiling programs, but have never seen this error before...

[SkyNet]

setuid-root I belive is chmod +s file

[SkyNet]

I didn't see this before, but we actually have an OMP. It might be a bit out of date, but it probably still applies. Dial-Up Modem OMP