[thelist] wvdial setup on Linux (Debian)

David Dorward evolt at david.us-lot.org
Fri Dec 6 02:00:01 CST 2002


On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 08:31:34PM -0000, Andrew Maynes wrote:
> now that I have installed Linux for the 4th time (and everytime it is completely
> different) I have manged to get the wvdial to do something :)  However the
> something isn't much!
>
> -->Wvdial: Internet dialer version 1.20
> -->Cannot open /dev/modem: No such file or directory

> Shall I reformat the hard drive and install again?

Nooo! It is very rare that reformatting and starting again will help
more then asking an expert :)

> Or how can I find out where the modem is?

Under Linux you can access hardware through /dev where different devices
are accessed as files. A lot of these devices have rather obscure names
so symbolic links are used. A symbolic link is a bit like a Shortcut file
under Windows, but programs rarely try to act on the link instead of the
file it points to.

/dev/modem is a symbolic link, but it doesn't appear to exist yet on your
system - which is fair enough, modems aren't the easiest of beasts to auto
detect. So all you should need to do is create it.

First you need to know what device your modem is connected to, I'll assume
you are using a real modem (i.e. a box that plugs in to a serial port)
otherwise you are probably going to have to jump through rather a lot of hoops
(or find that it will not work under Linux).

If you plug it in to COM 1 then the device is /dev/ttyS0, COM 2 is /dev/ttyS1,
link it to /dev/modem.

e.g.

ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/modem

then (hopefully) all should be well.



--
David Dorward                                   http://david.us-lot.org/
"You cannot rewrite history, not one line."
                                      - The Doctor (Dr. Who: The Aztecs)



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