To whom it may concern:
I would like to share my experience in getting a pci modem intranet
connection with Fedora Core 6 x86_64.
Computer specs:
Dell XPS Gen 2 desktop with 3.4Ghz Intel P4 HT processor, 1GB ram, 250GB
HDD, NVIDIA G-Force 6800 video card.
It has a multi-boot setup including: Windows XP Media 2005, Windows XP
Pro, Mandriva Le 2005, and the latest Fedora Core 6 x86_64.
I use a boot manager called Bootitng which does everything Partition
Magic or the later "Norton Ghost" can do and more. With Bootitng I
create a compressed image of all the Operating systems which are stored
in the data partition. The HDD has a 100GB partition for data and the
Windows partitions are 15GB. The Linux partitions are allocated 25GB but
are built on 10GB partitions and expanded with resize2fs to their 25GB
size after they are built to ship shape, reason being it only takes less
than 10 minutes to wipe out the installation and re-load the image of a
fresh install when things go wrong on a 10GB partition, instead of the
traditional method with CD or DVD rebuild from scratch, and it is much
faster to use this method than to back-track and try to undo your
mistakes some times.
I started downloading FC6 on Dec. 03 2006 with Bittorrent from my
Mandrake Le i686 and did not stop it till it finished around the 18th of
Dec. 2006 with the Dell supplied Intel 537ep modem, upon first
installation it became clear that I would not be able to put FC6 on-line
with the Intel modem so I put a Lt 1648t00 modem in another slot and had
it on-line within a day or two with the martian kit using a
martian_modem built in Mandrake using the ltmdmobj.o-8.31-gcc3.gz as
Mandrake LE comes with gcc 3, how that happened became a puzzle later
on as I had saved a copy of it and tried using it again to no avail.
PS: I was never able to get it on-line with wvdial, only through
Administration/Network or KPPP, wvdial would show "pppd *" or "pppd >"
which was unusual and appeared to connect but nothing but errors when
trying to surf or do anything on the intranet, and eventually would exit
with error code 16.
I then decided to start from scratch again as the first installation had
both Gnome & KDE desktops and because I never use Gnome and the list of
updates was huge, I omitted Gnome and tried again with a more customized
set-up.
With my easy wipe & re-load system with bootitng I was never able to
transfer any packets on the intranet after at least 120 tries
using an arsenal of martian_modems stripped and un-stripped built in
Mandrake using gcc 3 & gcc 4 with both
ltmdmobj.o-8.31-gcc3 & ltmdmobj.o-8.31-gcc4 inserted before the #make
install command and inserted directly in /usr/sbin without the #make
install step, it would at times appear to connect but "no dice".
On New years eve I took a break and treated a friend with some Saskatoon
wine and he shook his head at me saying I'm wasting my time, just use
your Windows and carry on, to hell with those 64 bit Linux, (he sets up
computers for the government of North West Territories here in northern
Canada, all Windows of course). I told him how I noticed FC6 had some
updates that I wanted to apply and try again as one of these updates is
for irqbalance which is integral to this martian approach. So after
recovering from the hangover the next day I jumped right back in and
updated the kernel to the so-called final version and updated
every network related .rpm including irqbalance, iproute, etc. and built
the martian kernel mod only, and inserted the Mandrake built
martian_modem with gcc4 and ltmdmobj.o-8.31-gcc4 in /usr/sbin, and did
not go through the ,/automate steps and decided to just issue
the martian_modem command without automation and finally was able to
surf, (most often this was the route I took: not doing the automation)
But after half an hour the speed went from 3Kbps to 1Kbps and it
took an eternity to do a small update. After a couple days of
frustrating troubleshooting I exchanged that Lt 1648t00 modem with a Lt
1646t00 modem with the mars chip and managed to maintain an average of
3Kbps speed while doing updates. The Intel 537ep modem as with ESS,
Pctel, Motorola etc. usually run at
4.4Kbps min on this line so I removed the 1646t00 unit and put in my
last Lt
modem that I knew was good as Mandrake was using it successfully in the
past and brought the speed up to an average of 4.0Kbps, (another 1648t00
modem.)
As of this writing,Jan 09, 2007, I finally applied all updates and went
back into the scripts folder and ran the ./automate.sh commands and made
a compressed image, deleted previous images and re-booted, tried to go
back on-line and to no avail, I was not able to re-connect, I wiped out
the partition and re-loaded the image and still no intranet, NO CARRIER,
NO DIAL TONE, etc. etc. etc. Three weeks, day in, day out, non stop,
every waking hour, down the toilet, start over, was what was going
through my head but then I remembered the last thing I did, running
those automation
commands recommended in the martian kit, I tried running the
remove_outdated.sh command and re-booted. NO intranet. So I went into
system/services in FC6 and un-checked martian and hit "save", re-booted,
and got back on-line and wrote this blurb.
Either there is something funny about those automate scripts regarding
FC6 or I have another underlying problem with my unit. I sometimes feel
FC6 x86_64 destroys Ltmodems, but this third unit is holding it's speed
thus far. Still cannot establish a successful link with wvdial, a sample
of it's output follows, (this is with added line Carrier Check = no).
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT645-6839
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT645-6839
CONNECT 40000 V42bis
--> Carrier detected. Waiting for prompt.
Telus PLANet EDTNTNT7
login:
--> Looks like a login prompt.
--> Sending: foxfire
foxfire
Password:
--> Looks like a password prompt.
--> Sending: (password)
AiiNet:>
--> Hmm... a prompt. Sending "ppp".
ppp
Entering PPP Session.
IP address is 161.184.197.236
MTU is 1524.
~[7f]}#@!}!}!} %} }$} } }!}$}%t}"}&} } } } }'}"}(}"}1}$}%t}3}+}!
edtn_tnt;_~
--> PPP negotiation detected.
--> Starting pppd at Tue Jan 9 16:37:16 2007
--> pid of pppd: 16699
--> Using interface ppp0
--> pppd: 7
--> pppd: 7
--> local IP address 161.184.197.236
--> pppd: 7
--> remote IP address 161.184.255.203
--> pppd: 7
--> primary DNS address 199.185.220.36
--> pppd: 7
--> secondary DNS address 199.185.220.52
--> pppd: 7
Dano
