Re: Win Modem

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Teilhard Knight wrote:

Question 1:

> I got the drivers for my Win Modem and I just installed an USB modem. Now,
> when I try to install the Win Modem drivers I get:
>
> "The modem symbolic link is: /dev/modem ---> ./ttySL0
> This will conflict with support for the Lucent Modem (the win modem)
> Please: rm -f /dev/modem
>            and assign another symbolic link to ./ttySL0, such as:
> ln -s ./ttySL0/dev/modem2"
>
> I am being told what I have do, I just want to check with you whether there
> are no risks in doing it this way, or if something might happen. One thing I
> do not get is that ./ttySL0 would be assigned to both modems. Is this
> correct?
You can think of a symbolic link as a shortcut in Windows (not really 
accurate, but it'll do for now). You can delete, rename, move symlinks 
all day long without actually touching the actual file that the symlink 
points to (well, basically). So you could, if you wanted, have a single 
real file (device, text file, whatever) named TheRealThing, and create 
two or three or seven hundred symlinks to it, like so:
   ln -s /somepath/TheRealThing /someotherpath/SymToTRT_1
   ln -s /somepath/TheRealThing /forbiddenzone/SymToTRT_2

Then if you wanted the name "SymToTRT_1" to point to a different file, 
say "NotTheRealThing", you'd delete the first symlink:
   rm /someotherpath/SymToTRT_1
and then recreate it to point to the new file:
   ln -s /somepath/NotTheRealThing /someotherpath/SymToTRT_1

So, currently you have a symlink (/dev/modem) that points to 
"/dev/ttySL0", and your winmodem driver install wants to use the name 
"/dev/modem" for its driver, forcing you to move the symlink to 
something like /dev/modem2. That's fine, as long as you make the 
requisite changes to your dialing software (pppconfig, KPPP, whatever).

You don't make it clear that the USB modem has installed the driver to 
/dev/ttySL0, but you do strongly hint that that's the case. No, two 
devices (the USB modem and the winmodem) should not use the same device 
file name. Something's wrong.

>  
Question 2:

> Another silly question for you. How can I make work my floppy drive in the
> command line? It simply doesn't move. For the CD I do "apt-cdrom add" in a
> directory different than /cdrom in order to make it work. Am I doing all
> right?
>  

(You might want to separate different questions into different threads; 
people who don't bother reading your email because it's about win modems 
won't ever see this question.)

The "apt-cdrom add" is not the way to access the contents of your cdrom. 
I suspect that's mounting the cdrom (which is really all you're trying 
to do), and then it attempts to add the cdrom to the list of available 
sources in /etc/apt/sources.list (which is not what you're trying to 
do). Instead, what you want to do is mount the cdrom. The /cdrom 
directory is the usual "mount point" for your cdrom, and the command to 
mount it would be something like:
   mount /cdrom    (if other necessary settings are specified in 
/etc/fstab)
or
   mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom (if other settings are not in 
/etc/fstab, and assuming your cdrom is on /dev/hdc)

You can also mount it elsewhere if you like:
   mkdir /home/teilhard/removable_media_drive
   mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /home/teilhard/removable_media_drive

Then just "ls /cdrom" (or "ls /home/teilhard/removable_media_drive") to 
see the contents of your cdrom.

The floppy works the same way:

   mount /floppy (if /etc/fstab is configured for the floppy)
or
   mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy (assuming the floppy is DOS 
formatted and the drive is on /dev/fd0)