On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:33, you wrote: <snip> > > This thread puzzles me. Correct me if I am wrong but the modem connects, > gives a CONNECT messge (which incidentally says NoEC). It then dies on > LCP (ie the initialisation of the ppp protocol).
Correct. > Surely if the modem connects and so on the country code must be OK. I > understood that the country code tells the modem what dial tones, ring > tones etc the country uses so that those tones may be interpreted > correctly. However if you are up to the LCP page you are past intepreting > the dial tone and ring tone. Correct, which is why I was not too bothered about it. > I get LCP errors on my ADSL account too - it usually means there is an > authentication problem. Yes, but in this case it is not clear what the cause is. > NoEC means "No error correction" - in other words the modemsd have not > been able to agree on an error correction protocol. There is a file > called NoEC.txt in the ltmodem source (which is carrried over to various > packages I have been able to find on the web). It suggests: > > "If a ppp connection if not sustained, > and the output from > # tail -f /var/log/messages & > includes "NoEC" and/or a block like: > ^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G^G > > then try adding this line to /etc/ppp/options > > asyncmap FFFFFFFF " > > Worth a try, and worth reading the whole file too. Indeed. There is also some discussion connecting this problem with boot options in the BIOS (i.e. you do or do not want the BIOS to do something to the peripheral before booting). I'd rather ask Alan to edit a file than poke around in the BIOS just yet. Anyway, I am glad that you have managed to recap all this- I had it pretty straight in my head, but I was not able to spend enough time with Alan to follow through, which is why I detailed where I had got to in case someone else was able to step up. > What I'd really like to see is someone going round to Allan's, firing up > minicom, dialling the ISP and looking at the output. If it is script > autenticatuion it is often possible to authenticate, then you will see > something like "ppp starting now" with a whole lot of garbage to follow. > (the garbage is ppp protocol stuff). You can then actually attach ppp at > that stage, but its not much of a method of getting onto the internet on > any regular basis. > > I cannot recall what you see in minicom if pap or chap are the auth > methods, something unintellgible IIRC. Well, with an external modem and "PAP/CHAP" authentication selected it sails through. > All this is why I gave up trying to run modems in a desktop years ago. I > found a modem that worked in linux, put it in a small cheap machine and > installed a router distro like freesco, smoothwall or ipcop. After that > any computer with an ethernet card, a tcpip stack and a dhcp client can > connect to the net. Also modems are going the way of the dinosaur with > other connection methods. A lot of grass roots open source software is > created by a geek with a need. Most geeks have boadband, and no need to > make the modem work. > > Having said that laptop users often really want their modems to work, and > have little choice about what is inside the machine. I have had two > laptops with ltmodems, and both worked fine. I am not sure what the > current laptop has, but no doubt it will make itself known at some time. True, and in fact I have just acquired another ThinkPad. This is a 600X with an internal... ltmodem! Unfortunately I am using Win2K on it right now and I am in the middle of something, or else I would have wiped it, installed Mepis and figured out the ltmodem thing already. If Alan's machine was a laptop it would be trivial for him to take along to the next fix-up meeting, whenever that was. (Sorry Alan, I know you're right there, reading this, but I don't how else to refer to your machine). Andrew
