Re: PCTel Modem vs. Debian 2.2r3
At 19:39 25/7/2001 -0300, Vitor Silva Souza wrote:
For the last couple of weeks I've been unsuccessfully trying to
connect to the Internet on my Debian 2.2r3 (potato) distribution, running
kernel 2.2.19pre17, using a PCTel modem.
Hello again,
After a while I did manage to use my PCTel PCI modem on my Debian
system. If anyone is having the same problem as I am, please read my
mini-Howto on installing PCTel PCI modem on Debian 2.2r3 (potato) attached.
If you know someone who's having problem, this document tells exactly what
I did and it might help.
Peace,
- Vítor
==================================================================
PCTel HSP56 Micromodem PCI at Debian 2.2r3 (potato) Mini-HOWTO 0.1
==================================================================
1 - Introduction
================
1.1 - Purpose
The purpose of this document is to be a guide to anyone who is having problems installing a HSP56 PCI Micromodem from PCTel on a Debian 2.2r3 (potato) system.
In the folowing paragraphs I will try to describe how I installed this modem (which is becoming popular on the latest computer models) on my Debian system (a very popular Linux distro). I did not try other distributions of Linux or other kinds of Winmodems.
For more information on Winmodems/Linmodems and the installation of their drivers, please consult:
- Linmodems.org
- Rob Clark's site: http://www.kcdata.com/~gromitkc/winmodem.html
- The Linux Documentation Project: http://www.linuxdoc.org
- Jan Stifter's Homepage: http://www.medres.ch/~jstifter/linux/pctel.html
These links have been very helpful to me.
Last but not least, please excuse my english. I'm not a native speaker. I wrote this in english so it could reach more users, but if you think portuguese is easier for you to understand, please contact me. I'll be glad to write to you in my native language.
1.2 - Warning
Use this document as a guide only, adapting the instructions in it to your case. This is not a final solution, and things can go wrong! The author does not guarantee the instructions below won't damage your system in any ways and will not be held responsible for any harm caused by the use of this document. In other words: use this guide at your own risk.
I am not a Linux expert. This document tells you my experience by describing exactly what I did. This has worked on a i686 system (AMD Athlon) with Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r3 (potato) installed, and a PCTel HSP56 Micromodem PCI (not onboard). I don't know if it works in any other plataforms or kinds of modem so, if you try it and it works, please let me know.
1.3 - The author
If you want to contact me, please use my email:
Vítor Souza <vitor.souza@terra.com.br>
Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions or suggestions for this Mini-Howto.
2 - Before you begin
====================
Before you begin, please be sure to have the following:
- The CD Set for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r3 (potato) binaries (at least CDs 1 and 2 of the 3-CDs Set).
- Access to the internet on another machine or system.
- Some hard disk space (can't precise how much).
3 - The installation procedure
==============================
The installation procedure consists on:
- Getting the driver from the Internet;
- Installing and preparing the kernel source;
- Compiling and fixing the driver;
- Connecting to the Internet.
I did all the steps above as root, so I won't describe which steps requires root access and which ones don't. If you don't want to do all the instructions as root, try to do them as a normal user and su as root for the instructions that tell you "Permission denied". I'm just not that cautious about running my system as root when I'm installing things. My opinion is that as long as you don't play games or access the Internet as root, you'll be OK.
3.1 - Getting the driver from the Internet
The drivers that worked for me were on Jan Stifter's Homepage, at http://www.medres.ch/~jstifter/linux/pctel.html. The name of the archive is pctel-2.2.tar.gz, and it should still be there. Download it and copy to any directory to which you have access to when logged in Linux.
Also, you'll need a little script called 'fixscript'. You can find the latest version of it reading the Linmodem-Howto (look for it a the Linux Documentation Project). At the end of this document there is a version that worked for me, and you can use that also.
$ cd /directory/where/files/were/downloaded/to
First of all, access the directory where you copied both of the files (the drivers and fixscript).
$ cp pctel-2.2.tar.gz /usr/src
$ cp fixscript /usr/src
Copy both of them to the /usr/src directory. That directory should exist on your Debian distro.
$ cd /usr/src
$ tar -zxvf pctel-2.2.tar.gz
Change directory to /usr/src, unzip (de-compact) and untar (de-archive) the driver files. This will create the directory pctel-2.2. You can erase pctel-2.2.tar.gz if you want.
3.2 - Installing and preparing the kernel source
The driver README file says it needs the kernel source files to install properly. Debian 2.2r3 uses kernel 2.2.19pre17, so that is the one we will get from the CD Set. To have the sources for this version of the kernel on your disk, do the following:
$ apt-get install kernel-source-2.2.19pre17
This will install the kernel source and all the other packages needed to unzip it.
$ cd /usr/src
Change to the directory the zipped (compacted) kernel is.
$ bzip2 -cd kernel-source-2.2.19pre17.tar.bz2 | tar -xvf -
Unzip and unarchive the kernel files. This command will take a while, because it's a big file.
$ ln -s kernel-source-2.2.19pre17 linux
Make a symbolic link (`man ln` for more information on links). This is usually done so every program looks for the sources in the same place: /usr/src/linux.
$ cd linux
$ make dep
Issue these three commands to evaluate the dependencies of the kernel source. Don't mind all the stuff it will display on your screen. Trust the kernel wizards, it will work.
3.3 - Compiling and fixing the driver
With the kernel and the drivers in their positions, it's time to compile the driver.
$ touch /usr/src/linux/include/linux/modversions.h
This is required before compiling the driver. According to Jan Stifter, this is an ugly hack you can pull if the file modversions.h does not exist in the proper place on the linux kernel source files.
$ cd /usr/src/pctel-2.2
$ make
Change the directory to the driver dir and make (compile) the driver modules.
$ cp ../fixscript modules
$ cd modules
$ chmod 755 fixscript
Copy fixscript to the modules directory, access it and give fixscript execution permission.
$ ./fixscript ptserial.o ptserial-fix.o
Fix the ptserial.o module. The other one doesn't need to be fixed.
$ mv ptserial.o ptserial-old.o
$ mv ptserial-fix.o ptserial.o
Backup the original ptserial.o and replace it with the new, fixed version.
$ cd ..
$ make install
Go back to the parent directory and install the drivers. They will be copied to a /lib/modules subdirectory with your kernel number and will be ready to be loaded. This last command will also create a device file for you modem (/dev/ttyS15) and set it up properly.
3.4 - Loading the modules
These two commands should be issued everytime you reboot and want to access your modem. Maybe I'll add a section about how to automatically load the modem everytime the system boots later (or maybe someone will do that for us).
$ insmod pctel
$ insmod ptserial
3.5 - Connecting to the Internet
There are lots of utilities that can be used to connect to the Internet. Some Debian documentation recommends 'wvdial' (see http://www.worldvisions.ca for more info), and so do I. It has been working nice and clean for me.
To have wvdial installed and configured, issue this command:
$ apt-get install ppp wvdial
wvdial should detect your modem (remember to load the modules first! We did that on step 3.4!) and configure itself automatically. It sould show, at some point, the following:
Found a modem on /dev/ttyS15.
ttyS15<Info>: Speed 115200; init "ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55 +FCLASS=0"
After this you're ready to connect to the Internet! Only other thing you need now is to tell Linux what nameservers you use. If you don't know that, ask your provider. Edit the file /etc/resolv.conf with your favorite editor and type:
domain your.domain.name.com
nameserver YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY
nameserver ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ
Where your.domain.name.com is your provider's domain on the internet. YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY is the IP address of the primary nameserver and ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ is the IP address of the secondary nameserver (if available). Look at my resolv.conf file for example:
domain terra.com.br
nameserver 200.177.250.10
nameserver 200.177.2.10
You can also try pppconfig instead of wvdial, it has a configuration interface that you might find easier to use. Install it with `apt-get pppconfig` and type `pppconfig`.
4 - Fixscript
=============
#!/bin/bash
F=/tmp/objcopyscript
S=/tmp/syms
MI=/tmp/modinfo
echo -ne "kernel_version="`uname -r`"\0" > $MI
depmod -e $1 | grep -vE "^ltmodem" > $S
echo "#!/bin/bash" > $F
echo "objcopy \\" >> $F
for i in `cat $S` ; do
echo -n doing $i
new=`awk '/ '$i'_R/ {
printf("%s", $2);
}' < /proc/ksyms`
echo " $new"
echo "--redefine=$i=$new \\" >> $F
done
echo "--remove-section=.modinfo \\" >> $F
echo "--add-section=.modinfo=$MI \\" >> $F
echo '$*' >> $F
cat $F
chmod a+x $F
$F $1 $2
rm -f $F $S $MI
______________________
Vítor Estêvão Silva Souza
vitor.souza@terra.com.br
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