Re: Fw:Mewbie Having Much Trouble Getting Deb 2.4.18-bf2.4 To Work
Leonard Chatagnier wrote:
I've read the rules, so forgive me this one time. It seems I have great
difficult communicating my situation and that's why the direct contact.
That's okay. However, I'm returning it to on-list, so that others with
more experience might be able to help.
There is a 3Com NIC on a PCI slot BUT, it's not connected to anything
outside the box. A local friend, experienced with networking told me that
you can't use it without having the outside connections such as cables,
routers, and a modem in the line but not a winmodem which is all I have
beside the NIC card. A very helpful member at linmodems.org assumed I had a
functioning NIC and because I was having difficulty getting the modem to
work got me to install dhcp-client_ver-woody,etc. I installed and did
loopbact test which didn't show an ethernet connection. I am dumb is this
area but assume the ethernet card has to be connected to something besides
the PCI buss to work The card is 3c905B 100 base TX-[Cyclone] (rev34) on a
Dell Dinensions XPS T450 given to me with no documentation.
For the purposes of this conversation, there are generally two common
types of networking available for computers: dial-up, and broadband.
Dial-up uses a modem and analog phone lines (normal house phone lines)
and regular phone cable.
Broadband uses a NIC and Ethernet networking hardware (routers,
cable/DSL modem, switches/hubs, Category 5 cable, etc).
Many computers have both a modem and a NIC.
If I understand what you're saying, your machine has both, but you don't
have a broadband service (such as a Local Area Network (LAN), or a DSL
or Cable Modem service), and you're going to connect to the Internet via
Dial-Up.
In that case, don't even mention the 3Com card; it'll just confuse us as
to what you're trying to do. The suggestion from the member at
linmodems.org would have been useful if you had broadband service, but
you don't, so just put out of your head his suggestions.
The network files I dselected were all the files under optional networking
except anything related to ppp and wvdial so to still have modem
functionality. Wvdial was uninstalled due to a dependency comflict so the
modem is not working now and I will have to reinstall wvdial or the entire
networking system to get modem functionality again. When I do, I'll go
through your posting lists and reply via the group, not directly to you
unless you want that.
You might want to start a new thread with a more appropriate subject
line, like "Can't get dial-up working".
You mention having a winmodem; although most can now be coerced to work
with Linux, it'd be much easier if you had a real modem. Depending on
the chipset of your winmodem, you might even have to resort to compiling
your own kernel, etc, which can be very intimidating for a newbie.
But there's also a chance you can get it working without that much effort.
First thing is to find out what chipset is in your modem. Run "lspci"
and look for any references to a modem. Now with that info, go to
linmodems.org and see what you can learn about its suitability for use
in Linux. You'll need a driver for that modem; sometimes the kernel will
have the capability to recognize a winmodem; more often than not, you'll
have to download/compile an appropriate driver; if you have the cash,
and would rather save yourself a lot of headache, just go buy a good
quality external serial (not USB) modem (assuming you have a serial port
on the PC); it'll work much easier. (But if you're the type that would
rather spend money than spend time and hassle, forget dial-up
altogether, and get broadband instead.)
Once the system actually recognizes the modem device itself, you'll need
dial-up networking software. "wvdial" is a popular utility; I believe it
functions as a more user-friendly front-end to pon/poff/pppd/chat, for
the text-based console. There are also GUI-based front-ends, for use in
X, such as "KPPP" and "xisp". "pon" and "poff" are more lower-level
connection utilities; "pon" starts the ppp process, and "poff" turns the
ppp process off. ("plog" will show you the log of ppp activity.)
Having all these things in place, when you're not dialled up, your
machine is off the network, and your phone line is usable for normal
conversations. When you want to connect to the Internet, you'd invoke
one of these utilities (such as "pon" or "wvdial" or "kppp"), and the
modem grabs the phone line, dials your ISP, gets an IP address, and then
after 20 - 80 seconds or so, if all goes well, will be connected to the
Internet (at slow speeds); your phone line will be unusable at this
point for normal phone conversations. When you're finished browsing the
web, you'd kill your connection (by using "poff" or Ctrl-C'ing "wvdial",
etc), and your phone again becomes usable for voice communication.
Hopefully I haven't been too simple, or too obtuse. Also, hopefully,
you'll soon have your Debian box on the 'net.
--
Kent
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