Lucent WinModem in ALT Linux Master

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Following notes are applied to modems based on Lucent chipset only (Lucent was formerly Bell Labs, currently Agere). In my case this is a Genius GM56PCI-LA device. More details about LinModems and it's support under ALTLinux look here: http://wiki.atmsk.ru/?LinHardWare/Modem/WinModem.

Additionally, there are lot of RPM packages at ftp.atmsk.ru/pub/contrib, builded by Vitaly Lipatov for support Lucent WinModems under ALT Linux Master/Junior 2.2. But Vitaly told me that source RPM has been never exists, so we have no possibility to adopt his package to new kernel builds because new kernel build requires appropriate drivers build.

I hope that this page will be unnecessary in the nearest future, when LTModem support will be provided by ALT Linux «out-of-the-box».

So... There are TWO different packages published in the Web with the same name: ltmodem.

First is maintained by www.close.u-net.com and currently has version 0.9.9. It provides following features:

Detects Lucent PCI modems, prints rom checksums, estabilishes basic communication with the modem.
Get the modem on/off hook and dial both dtmf and pulse.
Detects dial tone and answer tone.
Detects incoming call, then goes offhook.
Completely working full duplex voice mode (working at 8kHz, 16 bit, linear). It is already possible to use this driver to turn your winmodem into telephone.

So, there are NOT DRIVERS, but set of utilities! And these utilities are failed on my Linux box.

Second is maintained by www.heby.de/ltmodem and contains drivers for Linux kernel 2.4. Current version is 8.26a9. This is exactly what we need (nb: last version for 2.2 kernel is 6.00). I don't tried to create RPM from this stuff because provided utilities for building and installing, in my humble opinion, are...

too «interactive» for using in RPM building/installing procedure (rpmbuild and rpminst blocks any interaction with keyboard);
too «smart» for installing on host X a package that's configured and builded on host Y.

Instead of ready-to-install RPM package, here are two things for getting up all stuff manually: (a) patch applied to ltmodem sources, and (b) instruction for installing step-by-step. If you want to get RPM, you can use build_rpm script that is included to sources and builds something applicable for installing under RedHat.

There are lot of rpm/deb-packages for various Linux'es on maintainer site, but no one for ALTLinux, and it seems unlikely that kernel modules compiled for kernel build X may be running under kernel build Y without recompilation. So my choice is manual building from sources.

If you don't want to copy multiple lines from browser to xterm, download this script that executes steps 1,2,3,4.

Step 1. Install compiler, libraries, utilities.

sudo apt-get install gcc3.2 glibc-devel kernel24-headers make patch

This means that (a) you have 2.4 kernel (kernel 2.2 requires kernel22-headers package) and (b) GCC version that will be used for building modules is 3.2. Although the current GCC version that ALT uses for building kernel core is 2.96 which is not completely binary compatible with 3.x, this symbios caused no problem on my box. If you want to avoid any problem, even unreal, install gcc2.96 package.

Step 2. Download and unpack driver sources.

mkdir ~/src && cd ~/src
wget -c http://www.physcip.uni-stuttgart.de/heby/ltmodem/ltmodem-8.26a9.tar.gz
tar xzf ltmodem-8.26a9.tar.gz
cd ltmodem-8.26a9

Optionally, select a nearest FTP-server.

Step 3. Apply my patch:

wget http://ilya-evseev.narod.ru/posix/linmodem/ltmodem-8.26a9-alt1.patch
patch < ltmodem-8.26a9-alt1.patch

What does patch?

Allows running of build_module not under root only, but under any ordinal account that have rights for running sudo.
Allows using of compiler version that's different from version used for building kernel core (see above).
Modifies location of kernel headers because ALT uses it's own conventions about this.

Step 4. Compile, install, configure modules.

sudo ./scanmodem       # is modem actually detected?
./build_module         # compiling... press Enter many times ;-)
sudo ./ltinst2         # install lt_modem.o and lt_serial.o to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ltmodem
sudo rm -f /dev/modem  # prevent autoload error
sudo ./autoload        # create /dev/ttyLT0, edit /etc/modules.conf

Step 5. Final checking.

Are drivers installed?

$ ls -l /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ltmodem
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       543712 Jan  9 13:58 lt_modem.o
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        28049 Jan  9 13:58 lt_serial.o

Are drivers running?

$ depmod -a; lsmod | grep lt_
lt_serial              20628   0  (autoclean)
lt_modem              472475   0  (autoclean) [lt_serial]

Is loading drivers on startup enabled?

$ grep lt_ /etc/modules.conf
# lt_drivers: autoloading and insertion parameter usage                               
alias char-major-62 lt_serial                                                         
alias /dev/tts/LT0 lt_serial                                                          
alias /dev/modem lt_serial

Is modem detected by communicating software?
```
$ wvdialconf /tmp/wvdial_ltmodem.conf
```

Changes in this document

11 January 2004 -- first russian revision
26 January 2004 -- translated to English
1 July 2004 -- small bugfixes from Vitaly Lipatov about his name and source RPM ;-)

Last changed at 01 July 2004 MSD 00:32
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