Re: Newbie comments & queries
Ian,
> I am, after all, still alive.
Good!
> I plonked an old internal 14400 modem in and had it working in no time
> flat. wvdialconf went fine. My wvdial.conf is now like the one that
> Brenda showed me, and I added in the line about the new PPPD having found
> from man wvdial that the version was such that this was needed.
Excellent.
> Could it be that the ttyS1 wa s defective like the PS2 port? I got some
> light on the modem to change, but not an OK back in sight. Funnily, I
> installed an old card with a serial port on, and could not get that to go
> either.
How did you send the AT commands? Need more info about the
failure (and success).
> Could it be that this a winmodem. The site listed in the Modem HOWTO
>
> http://www.o2.net/~gromitkc/winmodem.html
>
> is unavailable (?) so cannot check this out.
Yep, unavailable to me too, as was http://www.o2.net/~gromitkc.
http://www.o2.net gives a page, but it seems to be a
"shockwave flash" page and my lynx browser just shows
some text labels ([EMBED], www.O2.net). No invisible
links.
Well I tried searching google for info on Microcom 28.8
and found an email to Hylafax mailing list archives
from 1997, talking about a "Microcom DeskPorte 28.8K fax/data
modem with Tornato and Tricom 2882 settings" And they were
using linux. The problem was switching from fax mode
to data mode.
Another reference:
see http://users.bart.nl/~patrickr/hardware-howto/Hardware-HOWTO-30.html
Section 20 (Modems)
Appendix E (HW unsupported by Linux)
Dated September 1999, a bit old. Then again, maybe so is your modem.
Looks like your modem is ok (not a winmodem).
> Add to that my phone line is so noisy that cannot connect at any
> reasonable speed and have been waiting for the telkom man to have a look
> some time this week. Pick the phone up and the hiss and crackles are very
> prominent. Maybe this is why I cannot get the site above as we get down
> to 250 b/s speeds (3 to 4 K is hoped for )
Hmm bad news. People in our local LUG were complaining
about high speed access, and noting that (wire, not line-of-sight)
distance to central office (telephone equipment) matters. Less
than 4 km is best, and the shorter the better. And I don't
think the problems with the line were audible... but they
had higher speed requirements.
> TYhe GNU/Linux Bible arrived today. Gives a good outline & am studying
> it closely, all 10lb of it.
Excellent.
> I am not sure even now of how to get an eamil out. I am on a dial up to
> my isp and we use SMPT to send the mail and pop to download it.
Sounds good. If you get use the IMAP protocol to get the mail
from your isp, then you can download all the headers first,
then choose which emails you want to actually download the
bodies of, and delete the rest right off the isp server
without downloading. With a high-volume list like debian-user,
could be useful. Your isp has to support the IMAP protocol.
I don't know the nuts and bolts of doing this, as I use POP.
> wvdial connects and then you are left at the end of the process with a
> blinking cursor, the programme does not exit having established contact.
Maybe the expect program (or the wvdial equivalent) is waiting
around for the other end to send it something it recognises.
You may have to adjust the script to match what the isp
sends out.
There are debugging levels you can turn on, to see what is
being sent to you from your isp and what you are sending back.
Turn that on and look at it...
Let's see.
The thing that dials out is wvdial, but the thing that establishes
a connection with the isp is pppd.
Look in /etc/ppp/peers... no! Bad Girl! (I'm always doing
things the hard way.) Run /usr/sbin/pppconfig
If you have trouble, write back.
Note that it is often good to give the prompt strings
that your isp will send you, without the first character:
eg, if you are expecting a string "Login: " from your
isp before you type your login name, you could put "ogin: "
as the expected string in pppconfig.
I guess the reason for this is that if you change
your isp, your script is more likely to work without
changes (if isp 1 had "Login" for a prompt and isp 2
has "login", for instance).
Actually my isp sends a string "Username: " and
my pppconfig expects "sername: ".
The expect program just waits for the substring to
appear, any other junk can come before and the
expect program will ignore it, thus appearing to
"hang" until the right substring comes along.
If the right substring never comes along.... well...
> I wrote an email to Brenda in mutt, but this would not send it. Then I
> ran eximconfig but this did not improve matters.
Looking forward to it!
> Do I have to have sendmail as well?
No, exim is a sendmail replacement. Debian comes with exim
installed instead of sendmail. Exim seems to be less of
a standard (seems only people who have debian have ever
heard of exim) but easier to configure. Really. You don't
want to mess with sendmail.conf. (I never had to, thank
goodness.)
> I guess I will have to get into that Bible just now.
>
> The cat has progressed to the top of the refrigerator. It is eating well
> and has eschewed the boxed catnuts supplied with it in favour of tinned
> sardines in tomato sauce which has enabled it to hiss more strongly.
Spoiling the kitty are we?
So, do you get to keep the kitty? How old is it? What's
its name? (Do you _want_ to keep the kitty?) How long do
you have it for? Is it male or female? Does it go
outside?... did you get the leather gloves? ;-)
Teach your cat not to step on your keyboard. Get it to step
over the keyboard when it wants to sit on your desk. Of
course, peeing on the keyboard is right out. :-)
I had a cat a while ago, he liked looking at the screensavers.
I tried to teach him to nudge the mouse to bring the screen
back to life, but he never learned.
> I found some backups of some of the lost files and have dried my tears.
That's good. Backups are a good thing. Just how broken is that
hard disk?
A while ago my hard disk started failing, and I stopped using it
right away. Installed (from scratch) on Sun workstation, a year
later got back to the pc and just did a quick "turn on, dump the
data" and it worked. Now I have to sort through a 159 Meg tar
file of my old mail. I'll have to write a program to do that.
Another project to add to my list.
> I hope to get an email out just now, so keep your fingers crossed.
Good luck!
So, what does the expression "Hold thumbs" mean? Something
like "cross your fingers" (for luck)?
--
bjb@achilles.net
Welcome to the GNU age! http://www.gnu.org
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