ByteME

Navigation

---

am assuming that you are using debian sarge or newer with default debian kernels and packages. This howto does NOT cover firmware extraction but just lists the configuration necessary to work on Debian sarge.

Well in theory this is quite simple on debian >= sarge. Firstly i have a very very old modem a version 2 (red not silver) but the principle is the same. Firstly you need a firmware file, you can extract these from the drivers supplied or there are some avaiable on the web. I already had a file from a previous setup so i do not repeat that here. What i do remember is that i only end up with a mgmt.o file while newer silver modems end up with two files with some strange names

I copied the firmware to /usr/local/lib/speedtouch/
You also need the debian speedtouch package "apt-get install speedtouch" will sort that out.

COnfigure your modules

You need the pppoatm module to be loaded before pppd tries anything so change /etc/modules to have this *extra* line :-

pppoatm

Any modules listed in here will be loaded at boot time.

Configure the hotplug scripts

This is well designed on debian. Simply edit the file /etc/default/speedtouch to the following. Or adjust the location of the firmware file yo suite your setup

FIRMWARE_FILE="/usr/local/lib/speedtouch/mgmt.o"
PPPD_PEER="speedtch"

Configure pppd scrips

Create the script in /etc/ppp/peers/speedtch and it should contain something like the following

# To connect to using this configuration file, do
#       pppd call speedtch

debug
lcp-echo-interval 10
lcp-echo-failure 3
noipdefault
defaultroute
user "your_user_name_supplied_by_your_ISP"
noauth
noaccomp
nopcomp
noccp
novj
holdoff 4
persist
maxfail 25
updetach
usepeerdns
plugin pppoatm.so
0.38

The 0.38 is only sutible for BT in the UK please check your settings. These are the VCI and VPI numbers that are specific to each telecom companies ADSL system.

Username and password

Depending on if your ISP uses CHAP or PAP for authentication add your username and password to /etc/ppp/chap-secrets and/or /etc/ppp/pap-secrets, both will not hurt if you don't know. The file format is as follows:-

# Secrets for authentication using CHAP
# client        server  secret          IP addresses
your_user_name_supplied_by_your_ISP     *       your_password

That should be it

Hopefully that will work. BUT i have seen a problem on sarge 2.6.8 kernel where the hotplug script is called 3 times *quickly* which stops the firmware from loading, no error messages appear. The same problem DID NOT exist on sarge's 2.4 kernel. Anyway if hotplug does this to you, rename the file /etc/hotplug/ppp/speedtouch to stop hotplug from loading the module/firmware. Reboot (yes it seems necessary) then try to bring the modem up manualy with

modprobe speedtch
modem_run -k -f /usr/local/lib/speedtouch/mgmt.o
pppd call speedtch

What next, the saga continues

Upgrade to kernel 2.6.10+ which has automatic firmware loading in the module :-)

Getting 2.6.11 to work with auto firmware loader

Ok here we go, it appears that you need to split the firmware into its two parts, using the firmware extractor found here. Some more info is given on the offical pages extracting the firmware. I'm updating this as i go and you will need make and gcc etc installed to build the firmware extractor. The process seems to be a case of

untar the firmware extractor
tar -xvzf firmware-extractor.tar.gz
(copy the firmware into the folder firmware-extractor)
./configure
make

This should according to the page linked above install the firmware in the correct place fr hotplug firmware loaded to sort out.

Well that went wrong!, i firstly needed to edit the configure file to change FIRMWARE_DIR to FIRMWARE_DIRS, then i discovered that i haven't got libc-dev installed, oh well apt-get install again!. Then it builds correctly with the commands above. Because of the firmware_dir(s) think manualy copy the two speedtouch*.bin files to /usr/local/lib/firmware. Now to reboot and test!

Right the firmware loaded but i now need to find a place to do pppd call speedtch

Network interfaces

To complete the automatic start up add the following to /etc/network/interfaces

iface ppp0 inet ppp
    provider speedtch

and also edit the "auto" line to add ppp0 as a automatic interface. It may be necessary to fine tune the lcp parameters but it seems to have booted up for me now.

---