am i on the right track or horribly misguided? can someone have mercy on me and give me a hint as to the proper AT+CNMI command that would allow kannel to retrieve messages from a merlin g100. or perhaps point me in the right direction to a resource for that would help me divine the correct command.for the purposes of posterity, i'll reply to my own message. i tracked down the novatel technical reference for the g100 [1] and discovered my problem was indeed related to an improper AT+CNMI init command. you can use "init-string = "AT+CNMI=3,2,0,0,0" in your configuration file and get the merlin modem to send and receive sms messages fabulously, which is not too bad for modem that you can get from ebay for $50 [2].
sorry if this this was all completely obvious to everyone.
[1] http://www.speeka.com/tech/gprs/novatel/GPRS%20Technical%20Manual%201.5.pdf
[2] http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=merlin+g100
