Ltmodem and Kernel 2.6.7 [SOLVED]

[sog]

UPDATE: problem was NOT the modem packages, it was the fact that they did not support my hardware. still can't figure out how other X23 users got them to work, but anyhow - see the last post in the thread for details. thx to galah, silverdirk, and neddyseagoon for their help walking me through specifics.

trying in vain to get the winmodem in my Thinkpad X23 to work. at first i had a hell of a time trying to get the ltmodem drivers installed, b/c they were only compatible with kernel versions up to 2.5, but with some help from NeddySeagoon, i finally got the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS ltmodem ebuild installed. see the thread here https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=196267&highlight=.

anyway, proceeding according to the instructions ltmodem provides, i successfully installed wvdial. but when trying to configure wvdial with wvdialconf the tool tests the modem on several serial ports and doesn't find one, telling me it's not installed.

meanwhile, a look at /var/log/messages gives me some message about "proprietary taints kernel" or some such.

net net, my modem is still non-functional, and i'd love to get it working. i hate booting into windows when i need to use dialup.

any thoughts or ideas would be much appreciated.

[galah]

Hi,

Code:

setserial /dev/tts/LT0

should do the trick. wvdial.conf should contain
Modem=/dev/tts/LT0.

You can alway's make your own wvdial.conf if wvdialconf doesn't detect your modem. man wvdial.conf will tell you how.

Galah

p.s. is sog for sea of green?

[sog]

thanks for the reply, galah. the set serial command returns me "No such file or directory"

i can just create it, of course, but is that what i want to do?

[galah]

Hi,

Hmmm, are you sure you have both ltmodem and ltserial modules loaded?

if you have, you should have /dev/tts/LT0 (that's a zero).

Do a lsmod to see if both modules are loaded.

Have you rebuilt your kernel lately? Everytime I change kernel's I have to rebuild ltmodem & nvidia-kernel to get them working again.

Galah

[sog]

i must have messed this up somewhere, galah.

an lsmod returns me nothing - my NIC and wireless drivers are both in the kernel, but the ltmodem obviously isn't a kernel option.

so the only thing i've done thus far is successfully emerge the ltmodem package using ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" - but i'm beginning to think that didn't work.

i confirmed that the package is installed with qpkg, but apart from that i'm pretty much at a loss.

in the kernel, i did confirm that i have the requisite PPP options enabled.

any further suggestions would be appreciated.

[galah]

Hi,

Okay, I'm assuming you have 2.6* kernel

when you log on (as root)

modprobe ltmodem
modprobe ltserial

then do a lsmod (as root) and see if ltmodem and ltserial are loaded. If they are then....

make a file: nano -w /etc/wvdial.conf and cut and paste this:

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/tts/LT0
Init = ATZ
Phone = [your dialup number]
Username = [your username]
Password = [your password]

then try again.

Also you can edit /etc/modules.autoload/kernel-2.6 and add ltmodem & ltserial so they load automatically

galah

[sog]

thx for your continuing help here galah.

the modprobe ltmodem went fine, and an lsmod returns that as inserted.

but the modprobe of ltserial failed with some "UKNOWN SYMBOL IN THE MODULE" failure.

i did a dmesg, but can't remember exactly what the error was but it was two flags in the ltserial module.

as a result, the wvdial.conf i created still doesn't work.

had a quick run through the forums and didn't see anything similar, but if you have any ideas on how to get this weirdness fixed i'd be grateful.

two more things:

1. i am on 2.6 - it's 2.6.7, gentoo-dev-sources
2. sog actually doesn't stand for sea of green, it's just initials

[galah]

Hi,

Well sog were getting a bit closer.

In your kernel under

Device Drivers > Networking support you need to have these enabled

Networking support
Network device support
Dummy net driver support
PPP
PPP multilink support (not sure if this is essential but it won't hurt)
PPP support for async

rebuild your kernel with these options enabled.

reboot (eeek! I certainly mean "shutdown -r now" :lol: )

then emerge -C ltmodem
then ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge ltmodem

modprobe ltserial
modprobe ltmodem

wvdial

Finger crossed. :wink:

Galah

[sog]

hi galah,

did as requested, and the dummy net driver piece was not enabled. so i reconfigured the kernel, rebooted, unmerged than remerged.

unfortunately, got the same error when trying to modprobe ltserial.

checking the dmesg, the problem symbols are restore_flag and save_flag.

if you have any other magic tricks up your sleeve, love to hear em. otherwise i may have to chalk this up to a kernel problem, as the 2.6 kernel seems to have no love for the ltmodems.

thanks.

[galah]

Hi,

Ahhh, shit!

Not the kernel problem. I'm running 2.6.7 love and because usb is stuffed in this kernel I am using the LTmodem. Slow but at least it works!

I will have a think about this and get back to you.

I hate it when nothing works as it should :oops: Sorry I couldn't be more help. :(

Galah

[sog]

no problem, galah. if you come up with something, great, but you've been a big help regardless. thanks.

[galah]

Hi,

Well sog, I really hate being defeated by a modem.

Call me obsessive but... I'm gunna set up my box with the same kernel that your using and work through until I get an answer to this problem.

Stand by lol.

Galah

[sog]

obsessive you may be, but i'm not complaining - i'm thankful at the same time, it's no biggie if you want to bag it. i'll keep hunting.

man i love the gentoo forums.

[galah]

Hi,

sog, I set up a basic Gentoo on a different partition. After the gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.7-r11 all I basically emerged were lilo, wvdial which took care of wvstreams and ppp. The I installed ltmodem and modprobed ltmodem and ltserial, fired up wvdial and it worked like a charm :o . I was hoping to recreate the error :roll:

Which gentoo-dev are you using? I have read at linmodems.org about this problem (can't find it again). It appears to have been around since 2.6.0 but doesn't seem to affect everybody. Dunno why it didn't happen to me :?

Anyway there is an updated version here. http://alk.at.tut.by/ltmodem-2.6-alk-2.tar.bz2 that is supposed to take care of the problem. Unpack it... tar -xvjf the file to wherever you wisk A directory will be created below it called /ltmodem-2.6-alk-3/ and the README in that directory tells you how to manually install the updated modules. It's pretty straight forward.

It was a gentoo user here http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/archive-fourth/msg00285.html that reported this as a problem. He reports that this updated version solved the prob. for him. Good luck!

Galah

[sog]

you the man galah. don't have time to do it now, as i'm at a conference, but will give it a roll first thing tomorrow when i get back to the office and let you know how it turns out.

hopefully this'll get it.

thx again.

[sog]

ok, galah, while it doesn't work yet i think we're getting much closer. here's the deal:

from the requirements:

[galah]

You're right, no erors messages! Yay!

I unpacked and used the drivers on a 2.6.7. so I don't hink that's an issue.

/dev/ttsLT0 is sym-linked to /dev/tts/LT0 so if you haven't got ttsLTO then you haven't got the actual real driver installed.

Can't say I've ever been bothered with modprobe.conf.

But, at this point I think we can regress and do:

#modprobe ltmodem
#modprobe ltserial
if you encounter no load errors up to this point then I think were in.

#lsmod
if you see ltmodem and ltserial then smile.

#ls -a /dev/tts/
if you see LT0 then fire up your editor and make necessary changes to wvdial.conf

I even have my eyes crossed at this point

Galah

[sog]

damn.

thought we had it.

but to this point:

[galah]

ckeck your messages

galah

[SilverDirk]

Just to add some additional info to the thread, I have a brand new install of 2.6.7 kernel (gentoo-dev) from the 2004.2 install cd on an old gateway laptop with a lucent winmodem.

The previous thread (mentioned in the first post on this thread) helped me a lot with getting the thing working, so I'll review my steps briefly:

I didn't have a working net connection at the time, so I manually transferred ltmodem-8.26a9.tar.gz and ltmodem-2.6-alk-v00.tar.gz into my distfiles directory via floppy.
(I'm not sure if the first file is required- I already had it before I read the post, and then saw emerge check the md5 on both it and the new package while emerging)
Then:
root@portalstone# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge ltmodem
// blah blah, installing, done
root@portalstone# modprobe ltmodem
root@portalstone# modprobe ltserial
root@portalstone# lsmod
// they were there. and ltmodem is a half-meg! geez!
root@portalstone# ls /dev/tts
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 LT0
root@portalstone# cat > /dev/tts/LT0
ATZ
ATDT 9999999 // listen on other phone to hear it dial
ATH
^D
root@portalstone#

So mine installed fine. (I have yet to configure it and make it work for net access, but I figured I'd post before I forget.) So, I would guess your problem is a kernel config thing. I remember something about a kernel option that would pass function arguments in registers, and would break compatibility with binary drivers... have that enabled by any chance? Other than that, I could post my kernel config if you thing that would help.

-SilverDirk

[sog]

will try to post my config when i can connect to the network tomorrow or sun. appreciate the advice, it's essentially the same process galah walked me thru, but no joy thus far.

given that the two of you are working off the same sources as me, it's gotta be something fluky. and man would i love to figure out what it is, b/c my Windows XP partition's got a bad case of software rot.

[sog]

more of the same, alas, despite the best efforts of galah and now SilverDirk.

my emerge of LTModem does complete, but throws up some errors that end up derailing me later. here's my compile return (note the save and restore flags errors a few lines down):

[sog]

bump.

anybody have any further thoughts on this? might i be best off just waiting and seeing if 2.6.8 fixes the problem? or even backslide to <2.6.5?

[pervoliner]

Hi sog
I have had the same problem on my gentoo. I have PIV 2800 HP.
I builded kernel with SMP support. But after that I got
save_flags and restore_flags is not defined when I tried load the modules.
Then I found following document in linux/Documents/cli-sti-removal.txt.
That document describes some intresting things about the two functions.
OK. About solutions:
First solution: disable SMP in kernel. And rebuild kernel and ltmodem.

Second solution: take ltmodem-2.6-alk-v00.tar.gz. Unpak it.
then replase all save_flags(..) and resore_flags(..) on
local_irq_save(...) and local_irq_restore(...) currespondently.
Then pack the folder in the same archive
ltmodem-2.6-alk-v00.tar.gz and rebuild. The drivers will work on smp kernel.
I hope it helps you.

Best Regards,
Pervoliner

[sog]

ALMOST there. so close.

here's the deal - i removed SMP support from my kernel per pervoliner's suggestion, then i followed the following instructions from galah/silverdirk.