How to issue ATX3 to modem?

[neil woolford]

On Tue, 2005-11-08 at 02:45 +0200, John Talbot wrote:
> I friend of mine is trying to use Ubuntu with his modem.
> 
> He setup his modem by going to System->Administration->Networking

It will work (though not in the original Warty release iirc), but as you
have found is a little feature light.

> 
> Unfortunately the country he's in is one of those that don't have a 
> modem-compatible dialtone. So he tries to set the ATX3 command 
> somewhere, but there was no place to put it in.

This is also needed by people using 'call waiting' and voicemail
services with BT in the UK.  I'd say that it is such a common gotcha
(with other os's too) that it might be worth having ignore DT (ATX3) set
by default...

> 
> Then he saw there's a connection between this Networking Settings tool 
> and the file /etc/chatscripts/ppp0 , so he tries to tweak that file.

Yes, pretty much the right track.

> 
> When he inserts X3 between AT and DT6187236 , the phone number is no 
> longer recognized by Network Settings.
> 
> So then he tries to insert X3 in some of the other strings, and he had 
> no success in making this command pass through to the modem when he 
> tries to dial from inside the Network Settings graphical tool.

The syntax of /etc/chatscripts/ppp0 is not easy, it involves a 'call and
response' layout of successive items on each line which isn't that
clear.  I've never found a good reference for it either.

The solution that worked for me was to replace the ATZ modem initiation
command with ATX3, leaving all the spaces and quoting and line breaks
untouched.

Example;  first the original script;

TIMEOUT 60
ABORT ERROR
ABORT BUSY
ABORT VOICE
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
ABORT "NO DIAL TONE"
ABORT "NO ANSWER"
"" "ATZ"
"" "AT&FH0L2"
OK-AT-OK "ATDT08451400101"
TIMEOUT 75
CONNECT

....which should be what you had to start with (apart from the dialup
number)

Edited to;

TIMEOUT 60
ABORT ERROR
ABORT BUSY
ABORT VOICE
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
ABORT "NO DIAL TONE"
ABORT "NO ANSWER"

"" "ATX3"
"" "AT&FH0L2"
OK-AT-OK "ATDT08451400101"
TIMEOUT 75
CONNECT

Which worked for me.  I emphasise the past tense, as I'm now happily
using broadband.

> What are we to do? (We and all modem users in this country)

Well, you could try the manual edit I suggest above.  It will work but
is  a fiddle to do.  As you've got this far I'd go with it for now to
establish a connection.

What I would strongly recommend though is to try the Gnome PPP utility
which is designed for the job;  it allows you to set and unset wait for
dialtone, and *much* more from the gui.  (I'm not so keen on the
superficially similar Modem Monitor applet.)

HTH

Neil

PS Gnome PPP is available as a package in the 'universe' repository.
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