This isn’t so much as a comprehensive guide as more of a point you in the right direction guide to using mythTV on dialup.

Step 1)

The first step is to locate a modem that will work with linux. I only use internal modems so my list of working modems is smaller then external working modems. In this case I used “USR5610B” its actually kind of an expensive modem, but I had one laying around.

Now there is two scenarios

a) you do a fresh install of knoppmyth and it will detect and install the modem assuming it supports it. if it doesnt install it goto scenario b and manually install it. If it does detect and install your modem skip to step 2.

b) You are adding a modem to an already running knoppmyth system. This part worked for me but may not be necessary for you. Kudzu is a kind of plug and play hardware installer. When you type at command line it will detect and install keyboards, modems etc. In my case it would segfault as soon as it found my modem. So I:
it removes two other sister packages as well. Then just ran “apt-get install kudzu” and it installed the debian specific kudzu which found and installed my modem. (kudzu will hopefully remove the need to install drivers, however if you modem comes with drivers feel free to install them instead of kudzu)

Step 2)

Now that your modem drivers are installed your modem still doesn’t work until you setserial.. next setup is to create a setserial line for you modem. One thing to keep in mind is that Seterial disappears on each boot so you need to add your line to a startup script.

An example setserial statement


copying this line probably wont work for you system, we need to customize it for your computer.

Run this will list all your PCI devices on your computer. Find the modem on the list. Here is an example modem.



Notice 2 things about this modem.. it says its IRQ. If your modem has irq 18 you need to have your setserial line reflect that. In this case the modem has an IRQ of 10 and our setserial line is :

setserial /dev/ttyS3 port 0xe800 irq 10 uart 16550A

now we have our IRQ. Next we need the port. Refer back to our example. It says “I/O ports at e800” You need to add an “0x” to the front of whatever port you have on your modem.. so now we have :

setserial /dev/ttyS3 port 0xe800 irq 10 uart 16550A

Last part you need to customize is the “/dev/ttyS3” and this step I need help with. How I did it was ran this:


ran it four times in a row. This tried to initialize all ttyS3 to 0. Now goto next step. i know there is a better way, so i await a response

Step 3)

after it installes it asks if you want to setup you say yes. It will scan all the /dev/ttySx devices and tell you which one it found a device on. Keep that in mind you now know what to finish your set serial line with.

Make sure setserial runs on EVERY startup. Also wvdial will ask you your ISP’s phone number .. your username password etc. if you type wvdial it should now fire up your modem dial, and connect, however you may not be able to open web pages yet. Next step.

Step 4)

if your on a network your mythbox will already have a default route setup (if you don’t know what it is, don’t worry just networking garbage), so every time your dialup you need to run the command:

this will make the able to detect new paths to other clients.. (ie the internet)
After your done surfing the internet you should reset your default route like so:
change the IP address to whatever your gatways address is.



So here is a typical internet session..


(wait for the connection)

**surf the internet, become cross-eye with boredom**

(remember to change to your IP addressing scheme)
(kills you’re your dialup connection)


So to wrap it up here is my VERY simple script that runs at 2 (via cron) in the morning.


copy and paste into a file called whatever.sh and run
add this line


That’s it, it will not dial out to get guide data a 2am every night. KEYPOINT make sure setserial runs on EVERY boot.

Even though I have a serial modem rather than a pci modem I attempted to follow this how to excluding pretty much up to the point of installing wvdial and configuring it.

wvdial completes a connection to my ISP but does not complete the login transaction. Can any body take a guess as to how I can resolve this? Here is a dump of the wvdial dialog after the modem connects

CONNECT 31200/ARQ
--> Carrier detected. Waiting for prompt.
[1c] ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `[1c]`[1c] ``[1c]``|[1c]|[1c]|[1c]|[1c]|[1c]|[1c]||[1c] [1c]|[1c]`[1c]|`||[1c]`[1c][1c][1c][1c]`[1c]|[1c]`[1c][1c][1c]`[1c]|[1c]`[1c]`[1c]`|` [1c] ` [1c] ` `|||`[1c]`[1c]|```
--> Don't know what to do! Starting pppd and hoping for the best.
--> Starting pppd at Tue Feb 8 08:27:01 2005
--> pid of pppd: 5720


Thanks in advance for any help you can provide

I have a little new info, I tried connecting to the ISP using just minicom terminal and found that my isp does not send the login prompt until I send a CR. This might be why wvdial can not complete the connection. Does anybody know how to configure wvdial to send a CR after receiving the CONNECT message?

I dont know much more then what i put in my howto.. =( sorry

wvdial may have a mailing list. Google is your friend.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Your dialup problems sound very familiar. Good info in this thread.

Don't give up smsanders. I found this problem in whole may not distribution specific. If you were to get ahold of a copy of slackware I think you would find that manually configuring your dialup would fail to connect in the same way. Each internet provider is different. I use ispsaver.com not bad for $9/mo but I had trouble connecting at first.

I didn't stick with minicom...never got it to work. But using pppconfig to setup my dialup as provider and then using pon and poff allowed me to dial and hangup. Worked the same for Slack and Debian (and Knoppmyth too) But you may be that far already.

The disturbing part after getting that far is having the modem hang up a minute or so after you think you finally got it.

I would point you to /etc/ppp/options
Scan down a little for a part about authentication and try commenting out noauth. (just add the # in front of that line)
Worked for me. Also... notice the recommendation to "Please do not disable this setting"...well..just try it at your own risk. I was unable to find the "correct" way although I didn't dig far. Anyone else have a comment on this?

Oh...I should also point out that I tried chap, pap and chat with pppconfig. You may need to try each one until you find the correct one. Mine was chap, ispsaver could not tell me. I had to press HARD to get a DNS so I could surf from them also.

If pap or chap make sure your /etc/ppp/chap-secrets file or /etc/ppp/pap secrets file has the correct info in it.

Sorry for the long post. One more item covered much more in depth was the fact that if you do get connected...nothing seems to work. Put a few other ways...data seems to go nowhere...or is does it go another "route"?

I put it this way because after several times thru the net3howto I still didn't quite get it. I am not the quickest, I admit it. But...I did realize that knoppmyth creates a default route and a gateway thru eth0. Once pppd comes alive and can be found typing ifconfig...all network traffic still seems to go the default route to eth0.

I found that by commenting out the the gateway line in /etc/network/interfaces that I was finally able to ping my dns.

I have a serial modem connected to a front-end. Worried that this change will affect connection to the backend box? It didn't. This frontend fired up just fine.

I run mythfilldatase on the backend thru this frontend box...nice to get working. I was worried for awhile if I was going to be able to use myth with dialup at all. Now...no problem. I still need to automate the process but I can get by.

Hope I helped a little.