wr3ck3d

Hi, I just installed Mandrake 8.2 yesterday. This is the first time I have ever seen Linux and know nothing about it. The first thing I would like to do is get my modem configured so I can start going online with my Linux side. I have a USR 5610a, I found this info on how to get it working http://www.blarg.net/~rwkramer/tech/linux.html#hw_5610, I take it that I would just enter that into the run window??? and click on run as root?? But how do I get to the next line?? When i hit enter it trys to run it?? And lastly do I enter than word for word?? Or do i need to replace some characters with letters/numbers?? Im sorry for probably sounding like I know nothing, but i really dont, first time I ever saw was yesteday. Would appreciate any help. -thanks

Dolda2000

That script only seems to set up the serial port, which should allready have been done automagically by the kernel at boot time.
What you need to do is to set it up to be used by the PPP daemon. Unfortunately, I don't run mandrake, so I don't know what the best way to do it on mandrake is, but I think there should be a configuration helper of some kind somewhere.
Maybe someone who actually uses mandrake should help you. Otherwise there is the PPP-HOWTO on www.tldp.org
The exact URL is www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO/index.html

wr3ck3d

Ok, first of all, i dont even know the proper way to enter that script. Do I just type a line....hit enter......type a line.....hit enter, or just continually type, i was typing a few lines but there was a $, so i guess that means i am log in as regualar user.....How do i log is at root??? and how do you make these "|" in linux?? -thanks

Dolda2000

First of all, you should not type them in directly on the shell. You should store it into a file, which you then make executable by running (on the shell) "chmod 755 <filename>" (where <filename> is supposed to be whatever you named the file). That kind of file is called a script, since it contains a sequence of commands to be executed by a program. The first line, #!/bin/sh specifies the program (/bin/sh, ie. the shell) to execute the file, which mean that this script is a shell script, since the shell interprets it. It's somewhat like a .BAT file in MS-DOS, except that shell scripts are much, much more capable.
You are right, the $ indicates that you are a regular user. # indicates that you're root. If you don't want to actually log in as root, which you shouldn't do, you can become root by running "su -". su stands for superuser, which is a common way of saying root.
The "|" is called the pipe character, since it (in the shell, that is) pipes the output of one command to the input of another. For example, in this script, the line "lspci | grep "US Robotics" | awk '{print $1}'" runs lspci, which lists the PCI devices in your system, pipes that output to grep, which only prints the line(s) that contains the string "US Robotics", and pipes the output of grep to awk, which, with the '{print $1}' argument, prints the first column in its input lines. So, all in all it finds the device number (which is the first column in the lspci output) of your US Robotics modem. Actually, the grep and awk commands are much more advanced then what I described here, but I'll spare you that for now.
I suppose you don't have an american keyboard, since you don't know how to type it. Since I don't what keyboard you use, I cannot tell you which key it is on, but on my Swedish keyboard, on which I still use an american layout, since I find it far superior, I get it by holding Shift and typing the button which says ' and *. It is possible, of course, to switch keyboard layout, but it uses different commands depending on whether you use it in X or on the console, so I won't go through that now.
By the way, if someone ever says that you can look at something like pppd(8) or fstab(5), and you don't know what it means (since you claim to be new to linux), it means a manual page. Just start a terminal and type "man 8 pppd" (for pppd(8)) or "man 5 fstab" (for fstab(5)), and you'll get some documentation on that subject. Almost everything in unix is documented pretty thoroughly in the manpages.
For example, see sh(1), for more info on the pipe character and the rest of the shell.

Sykotik

I started up with using KPPP as my dialer until I got more used to the whole Linux arena, then I tackled a script-based PPP system by mix-matching documentation examples from all over the net.

Worked for me.

freak132

no i believe "su" stands for switch user
if u type in
$>su username
u switch to that user but if u use it without arguements than it assumes u mean root

Dolda2000

Actually, the original UNIX su could only switch to the superuser, and if you look in the manpages from 1969 (before UNIX was released to the general public), it clearly states that su stands for superuser.