how do you get 'pon' to work?

Neil Woolford neil at neilwoolford.co.uk
Mon May 16 08:23:24 UTC 2005


On Sun, 2005-05-15 at 11:38 -0700, Lisa Z. wrote:
> I created an account with pppconfig. I'm not sure
> which Com port to use but I've tried using all of
> them(S0-S4). And when I type sudo pon, I get the same
> message:

Probably three parts to this problem:

> 
> /usr/sbin/pppd: In file /etc/ppp/peers/provider:
> unrecognized option '/dev/modem'

/dev/modem is a 'standard' name for the modem device, it is usally
soft-linked to the actual modem device, which may or may not be a
stadard port...
> 
> lspci says that I have a microelectronics winmodem
> 56k. Prior to that information it says: 0000:00:030 -
> would that indicate Com 3??

No, that is probably data about its pci address, which is the slot the
card lives in.

More importantly, the dreaded word winmodem shows up.  This will require
special drivers which you will have to find and install.  Information
can be found at www.linmodems.org and I would
also strongly suggest looking at the Ubuntu Wiki, especially
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/IntelFiveThreeSixEPModemHowto/
If nothing else, the first link in this, to
http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/ is well worth following.  You
especially need the ScanModem utility as only that will really tell you
what your modem is and which (if any) drivers you need for it.  ~There
is also a link to a dialup modem howto which is a little out of date but
basically sound.

Sorry not to bring a quick fix;  in my limited experience, the Lucent lt
family and Intel 536 based winmodems can be made to work, I'm sure
others are possible.  I'd honestly suggest moving to broadband to get
away from the whole sorry modem mess;  in much of Europe (I'm in the UK)
the price difference is now tiny and it is much easier to set up!

Neil









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