[techtalk] For the not so techie Linux users

[Beverly Guillermo]

> Hello, and thank-you for writing this. I am stashing it for later use. my
> laptop has a modem, not sure it is winmodem or not, it says LT modem and I
> think that may be Lucent Technologies. but when I am ready I will try it.
>
> JoAnn

On laptops, unless your modem is external, you're probably using
a pcmcia card.  For this, you're going to have to use PCMCIA services
or "PC Card" support package.  Almost all the distributions have
it and when setting up a laptop to run linux, it should automatically
install it.  Basically, the package contains "device drivers" for
every kind of pc card such as modems, flash memory, network cards,
and etc.  It also has several programs to make sure the cards are
working and properly configured.

If you have any type of package based system (like redhat or debian)
check to see if you have a package called pcmcia-cs installed.  This
is the typical name of the package.  If you don't have a package
system, do the following:

[root at stalefish ~]$ cardctl ident

'cardctl' is a program provided with the pcmcia-cs package as well
as 'cardinfo'.  Or you can check if the daemon associated with
the pccard services is working by doing a 'ps ax' ( I think it's
called 'cardmgr').  Another idea is probably to look
up of the modules installed because that what the pcmcia-cs package
will do.  You can do that by doing 'lsmod' at the prompt and
if you're using a modem, usually you'll see something listed such
as 'serial_cs'.  Or even easier, if you remember booting up your
laptop and hear a couple of beeps, then your laptop probably has
it installed and you don't have to worry about it as long as your
cards are being recognized.

If you do have installed and a 'cardctl ident' brings up a message
like:

cardmgr[###]: unsupported card
	...

but it gets the product information off the card fine, there should
be a directory /etc/pcmcia that contains all the configuration
files for the pcmcia-cs package.  Now, you can look at the file
/etc/pcmcia/config or you can do this:

string = a part of the product information usually the manufacturer
         or something unique for the product

[root at stalefish ~]$ grep string /etc/pcmcia/config

This should tell you if there is something similar to which you can
configure your card.  If there is something there similar, edit the
file (using some text editor like emacs, vi, or pico) to include
your product information using the established card information in
the file as a template.

If it doesn't give you any information about the card or if there
is nothing in the config file similar to what you have, you may
have to upgrade to the latest release of the file.  Usually,
the pcmcia-cs is translated to different packages for the different
distributions.  Or you can be adventurous and download the
tarball from their ftp/web site.

http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html

Also, the above website has a lot of good resource links for
more information about linux on laptops.

For a list of supported cards in the current "stable" version
of the pcmcia-cs package:

http://hyper.stanford.edu/~dhinds/pcmcia/ftp/SUPPORTED.CARDS

There's a great deal of information about the pcmcia-cs package that
I simply cannot write down all here.  I "recommend" reading the
Linux-PCMCIA HOWTO and if you have any questions about the text,
just ask.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Beverly Guillermo					                 [[mezanin]]
bguill at home.com                         http://members.home.com/bguill
bguill1 at umbc.edu                                         ICQ: 18004037


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