Modem Problems

[David Hart]

On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 12:12:00PM +0200, Bill Cairns wrote:
> I am playing with Ubuntu at home on a fairly (1999) old Dell machine. This is my first attempt at Linux. On Saturday I bought an external (Microcom DeskPorte Home) serial port modem. To my surprise I was able to install it and get it working without any great difficulties: I used the standard System > Administration > Networking.
> 
> But while it is working, it is not working very well:
> 
> The only way I can find of getting the modem to connect is by following the System > Administration > Networking route. Surely I should be able to connect without root privileges? Surely I should be able to create an icon that says "Connect to Internet"? Surely, if I tell Firefox to connect to an URL, it should have some way of initiating the connection and not just give me the informative message "www.x.y could not be found. Please check the name and try again"? 

You can use the Modem Monitor to use the conection you've configured in
System > Administration > Networking.  Right click on the panel and
click Add to Panel...
 
> On a Debian site I read of the command pon and got temporarily excited as that seemed to be what I was looking for. But when I type pon (or sudo pon) I get:
> 
> /usr/sbin/pppd: In file /etc/ppp/peers/provider: unrecognized option '/dev/modem'
> 
> which is not as helpful as I was hoping. (poff works fine).

'pppconfig' will configure a conection for use with pon/poff and
if I remember correctly, is usable by any member of the 'dip' group
without a password.  (The first user on an Ubuntu system is a member
by default.)
 
> I want to be able to connect to my service provider by clicking on an icon (or some similar convenient technique). This should not require root privileges.

Modem Monitor will give you an icon on your panel but it asks for a
password.  This doesn't really bother me as I've set it up only for
emergencies and when I'm away from home as I'm on ADSL most of the time.
 
> When Firefox or another program wants to connect, it should happen automatically. It would be nice if it asked me first.
> 
> Connections should time out and disconnect if there is no activity after a certain time.

When I was on dialup I've used the program/daemon 'diald' for this.
You'll need to enable the 'universe' repositry in synaptic to find
this (if you haven't already).  It takes a bit of setting up though
to avoid spurious dialups.

But I don't think a default install should allow either automatic
dialup or any user to configure the network.  At the very least it
will avoid unexpected expensive telephone bills.

-- 
David Hart <ubuntu at tonix.org>