2009/7/26 Robert D Davidson <robert(a)datamatrix.co.nz>:
I got into root and used pppconfig everthing went fine except the modem was not found automatically and I manually set it to dev/ttyS1 the offered default value. Howver when I tired pon I got unrecognized option '/dev/modem
Maybe the modem port is not turned on in the BIOS as Bruce said?
From memory, when you issue the "pon" command you should add the name of the file you set up.
In a terminal session, and running as root ... cd /etc/ppp/peers ls -l You should see a list of configurations ... "provider" and the one you set up. pon <your file> If the modem does nothing, you probably don't have the correct port - you should have been able to detect it when you did pppconfig. It's easy to use pppconfig and change it (or edit the file manually). It could be worth experimenting with Puppy Linux, running from CD. Puppy has a good "tool" for connecting via Ethernet or modem to the Internet. Alternatively, the other tools that you can use in Ubuntu (eg gnome-ppp) allow you to "query" the modem during setup. No response means you haven't got the right port! Gnome-ppp may work for you - it was just that I found pon/poff worked reliably - the computer I set up was going to a non-technical user and I wanted something that worked 100%. Michael