Next, you’ll want to investigate your hardware setup: whether your modem works with GNU/Linux and which serial port it’s connected to.
A simple rule determines whether your modem will work. If it’s a “winmodem” or “host-based modem,” it won’t work. These modems are cheap because they have very little functionality, and they require the computer to make up for their shortcomings. Unfortunately, this means they are complex to program, and manufacturers generally do not make the specifications available for developers.
If you have a modem with its own on-board circuitry or an external modem, you should have no trouble at all.
On GNU/Linux systems, the serial ports are referred to as /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1, and so on. Your modem is almost certainly connected to /either port 0 or port 1, equivalent to COM1: and COM2: under Windows. If you don’t know which your modem is connected to, run the program wvdialconf to try to detect it (see below); otherwise, just try both and see which works.
If you want to talk to your modem or dial your ISP without using PPP, you can use the minicom program. You may need to install the minicom package to make the program available.
The simplest way to get PPP running is with the wvdial program. It makes some reasonable guesses and tries to set things up for you. If it works, you’re in luck. If it guesses wrong, you’ll have to do things manually.
Be sure you have the following packages installed:
When you install the wvdial package, you may be given the opportunity to configure it. Otherwise, to set up wvdial, follow these simple steps:
Log in as root, using su (as described in an earlier chapter).
touch will create the following file if the file doesn’t exist; the configuration program requires an existing file.
This means you’re creating a configuration file, /etc/wvdial.conf.
Answer any questions that appear on the screen. wvdialconf will also scan for your modem and tell you which serial port it’s on; you may want to make a note of this for future reference.
Another popular way to connect to the Internet is via a LAN that uses Ethernet. This gives you a high-speed local network in addition to Internet access. Fortunately, though, you should have already configured Ethernet networking during installation so there isn’t much you need to do now. If you ever need to modify your configuration, here are the files that you will be interested in: