how to get dial-up on 10.04

It's close!

Of course, network-admin (his first solution) is out.

Gnome-ppp didn't work - I can't get it to dial. But I suspect it is a permissions problem. Any solution on how to give Gnome-ppp sudo powers? (I tried # sudo a+x /dev/modem, but no luck.)

Wvdial actually dials the number and connects (when run as # sudo wvdial), but then prints a bunch of gibberish on my terminal and loses the carrier. Every time. Yes, I checked the phone number, so I'm pretty sure it's not that.

Sorry, that should have been # sudo chmod a+x /dev/modem

pppconfig also dials and connects, but the chat script fails

Be sure your user has the correct privileges System→Administration→User and groups select your user and press on advanced sttings and verify/set privileges for your user.

Well, this is odd. In the settings for this user, she has already has permission to "Connect to internet using a modem" but not to "Connect to wireless and ethernet networks," but she can easily connect on DSL. She also already has permission to "Use modems."

The problem with pppconfig connecting was a mistake in the user info. I corrected that and can now connect via dial-up.

If anyone else reads this later, to connect with dial-up on Ubuntu 10.04:

I used scanModem from http://www.linmodems.org/ to determine which modem I had. (Alas, many of the other useful-looking links on that page are now defunct.)

laptop: IBM Thinkpad X23 w/ Lucent Agere modem

I then found this useful page and followed it:

http://martian.barrelsoutofbond.org/

As it suggested, I got the driver from http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/ltmodem/kernel-2.6/martian/

I used the martian-full-20100123.tar.gz driver. Be careful, there is another driver there w/ Ubuntu in the file name, but it is quite old.

Use make to create an executable file called martian_modem (as explained in the martian.barrelsoutofbond.org site above - I'm just copying him, adding 'sudo' instead of # command):

$ sudo make all
$ sudo make install
$ sudo scripts/remove_outdated.sh
$ sudo modprobe martian_dev

You should then be able to:

$ sudo martian_modem

to start it up. You'll have to leave it running in one terminal and start another to use wvdial or pppconf to connect. (And you'll have to start it running each session. When you close the terminal it kills martian_modem. I suppose there's a way to add this in at startup so it's already running when you're ready to connect.) I used pppconf and, since it ran, didn't check to see whether wvdial would have.

Oddly, though everywhere else tells me my modem should be at /dev/ttyS0, it is actually at /dev/ttySM0, as the martian.barrelsoutofbond.org site says.

I then used the pppconf instructions from the Tech Guy forums Cameron linked to above to configure and dial up.

Tom

PS Although I just found it, this link looks like it might have been useful yesterday, even though it presents a different way of doing this:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DialupModemHowto/Lucent/Agere

Thanks Cameron W, that solved my question.