Dialup serial modem ppp problem Minimal LiveCD 2004.1

[alla]

Hi all, I'm having a bit of trouble getting my 56K dialup modem working whilst installing Gentoo from the Minimal LiveCD 2004.1 .. I'm up to the point where I need internet connectivity to get the portage tree, however..

It did not detect the modem automatically and pppd says:
livecd root # pppd
pppd: This system lacks kernel support for PPP. This could be because
the PPP kernel module could not be loaded, or because PPP was not
included in the kernel configuration. If PPP was included as a
module, try `/sbin/modprobe -v ppp'. If that fails, check that
ppp.o exists in /lib/modules/`uname -r`/net.
See README.linux file in the ppp distribution for more details.

Now turns out it is missing /dev/ppp even though it's aliased in /etc/modules.conf
to ppp_generic.. but "mknod /dev/ppp c 108 0" doesn't seem to change anything..

..and I get unresolved symbol type messages when I modprobe ppp_generic ....

livecd root # modprobe ppp_generic
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: /lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: unresolved symbol slhc_free_R2894cfb0
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: /lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: unresolved symbol slhc_remember_R0bc55868
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: /lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: unresolved symbol slhc_toss_Rf89e3455
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: /lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: unresolved symbol slhc_uncompress_R3bc1319e
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: /lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: unresolved symbol slhc_compress_R76135e6c
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: /lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: unresolved symbol slhc_init_R2e0e927f
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o failed
/lib/modules/2.6.4-wolk-2.3/kernel/drivers/net/ppp_generic.o: insmod ppp_generic failed

Now as far as I know the modem is completely normal.. works fine in rh8 and if I run kudzu from the liveCD environment and kudzu from the rh8.. the modem info in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf is identical for both..

class: OTHER
bus: SERIAL
detached: 0
device: ttyS0
driver: ignore
desc: "RSS|0240 56000bps External Fax Voice Modem"
pnpmfr: RSS
pnpmodel: 0240
pnpcompat: RSS0240
pnpdesc: 56000bps External Fax Voice Modem

This is kinda becoming a little traumatising .. does anybody have any ideas? - keeping in mind that /lib is mounted readonly straight from the live CD so recompiling kernel modules etc isn't really doable... argh

thanks for your time, I'll happily try anything at this point
Alex