Going round in circles

[karen2205]

Following on from my post yesterday, I'm still unable to make the modem work.

Cutting 'cos I'm going to start writing bits of code

I'm now fairly certain that I've downloaded the right set of drivers for it. They're on a CD and on my memory key. Running tar xvfz slmodem-2.9.10.tar.gz from the CD seems to be making it try to extract the files and write them to CD, where it doesn't have permission to write 'cos it's a CD-R.

I haven't yet worked out how to mount the memory key (where it should have permission to write). Googling 'mount memory key debian' didn't bring anything particularly useful.

As far as I'm aware (and I could be wrong) I don't yet have a home directory (ie. when I type ls at a command prompt I don't get anything).

If I can't make this modem work with the drivers, then I'll be looking for an external, serial modem suitable for use with a laptop. I'm willing to buy second hand from people I know. If not, I don't imagine they're all that expensive new. I'm not buying electricals from ebay or other commercial second hand sources. This is not my preferred solution in any case, since I have a modem that works and that should be happy if I can make these drivers work.

Other stuff I did last night:
modprobe serial - gives no results
dmesg | grep tty - gives no results

Comments

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

I have a vague, distant memory that one can mount USB memory keys in the same way as other USB mass storage devices (this is what I do with my camera, for example) so those might be better terms to google for. ISTR I managed to mount my memory key as readable but not writeable under Debian when I was playing around with it but since I needed it for Windows-related purposes (powerpoint) I didn't bother investigating further,

[karen2205]

Does the penultimate suggestion http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=380376 look right?

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

Within the bounds of what-I-can-remember, yes. (ISTR in my case there was another step involved, but I may be thinking of getting some other thing to mount!)

[bob]

you probabaly do have a home directory.
most files are hidden
what does ls -la tell you

to untar the fiel i would suggest.

tar -zxvf /path/to/cd/slmodem-2.9.10.tar.gz ~yourusername/

then it should untar in your homedir

[karen2205]

How do I then get to it? The next instruction is to navigate to and open the un tarred file.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

Go to /home/yourusername (/home/~ may also work)
then do a ls.. you should now have a new directory from your untarring.. go to there..
if you don't have a new directory then you're probably best copying the original tar into your home directory: "cp /media/cdrom/tarname /home/yourusername/" and then do the tarring again. I presume you have the instructions for what to do once you have untarred the file?

As for flash drive.. the way I got mine working was to edit me fstab (/etc/fstab) - you need to be root to do this. Just google for fstab usb flash drive.. I've found that I tend to have to reboot when altering the fstab (I'm not sure if you are meant to have to but this seems to work).. if you want more direct help then let me know as I've done it recently.. you can quite easily get the flash drive to auto mount..

[hsenag.livejournal.com]

If I recall your comments on IRC correctly, modprobe serial said that the module wasn't found - it didn't give *no* results.

[karen2205]

Yep, that's right. My mistake.

[diffrentcolours]

You're probably not getting any output when you type ls -l because your home directory doesn't contain any files. If your prompt reads something like karen@laptop:~$ then everything should be fine (karen is the username, laptop the hostname, and ~ is shorthand for "my home directory". You can create a file with touch foo and see if it shows up with ls afterwards.

tar will (at least by default) try to extract to the current directory. You will probably want to run it from your home directory. I'm assuming that your CD-ROM drive is /dev/cdrom and that you've mounted it (with mount /dev/cdrom; Debian should be set up to automatically mount that to /media/cdrom). Type cd to return to your home directory (a useful shortcut that). Try tar xvzf /media/cdrom/slmodem-2.9.10.tar.gz to extract the tarball into your home directory.

When you connect the USB key, it should be automatically recognised by the kernel and assigned a "device node" in /dev. This is for talking to the device in a very low level way. To access the filesystem on the key, we need to use mount again. Firstly, plug in the key and read the end of /var/log/messages with less or similar - it should log that it's recognised the device and assigned it a node in /dev for its filesystem, something like /dev/sda1 (sd means SCSI disk, because USB devices are handled as if they were SCSI; the a means the first SCSI device recognised, and the 1 means the first filesystem on that device). You'll want to create somewhere to mount this filesystem (mkdir /media/usbkey as root) and mount it (mount /dev/whatever /media/usbkey) to access its filesystem.

Finally, instead of dmesg | grep tty try grep tty /var/log/dmesg. It is of course possible that this winmodem device of yours won't show up as a serial device, even after you install the drivers to it.

Can you provide a link to that HOWTO thing you had for installing the drivers?

This may also be of help: http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/

[karen2205]

I'd been mounting the CD using mount /media/cdrom

Instuction for installing the drivers - http://www.smlink.com/objects/Linux_instruction.txt

/me joins SourceForge and the newbie docs mailing list.

[bridgetester.livejournal.com]

there's a variant of the tar command which tells it to extract somewhere else. i think it's just using that other location, but i don't remember the syntax and order for sure...