Knoppix 3.8 And Motorola Cable Usb Modem - Working, then not

[s'tan]

I installed Knoppix 3.8 on my hard disk. I have Morotola surfboard cable usb modem which worked fine with hernel 2.4.x, but with new kernel 2.6.11 it doesn't work. also I read on many forums and on linuxquestions.org that usb is not supported in kernel 2.6.x and that all such modems can work only via eth card.
ok, I said.

but today something very odd happened. I loaded knoppix 3.7 live cd with kernel 2.6.9 and tried internet, and IT WORKED. even more funny is that after I restarted pc and loaded knoppix 3.8, I was able to access Internet via the same modem. HOW COME? I restarted PC, and the connection was lost. then after another restart the Internet was back on. Unfortunately after the last few restarts, i could not access the Internet.

can anyone tell me what is going on? does usb cable modems work under kernel 2.6.x or not?

i forgot to say that i also have folder /dev/root.old (I can see it being mounted during boot process) which was created after I upgraded Knoppix from 3.7 to 3.8. is it possible that linux somehow booted data from that directory? i tried to access it but i couldn't do it thru konqueror. it is somehow invisible.
also the funny thing was that, when i got internet, i started firefox and thunderbird. i set new homepage in firefox, and created email account in Thunderbird, but Thunderbird warned me that i would not be able to save the preferences??!! after i restarted PC, the homepage wasn't set and the email account wasn't there.

odd! odd! odd!

is it about Knoppix or... ?

[codeconfused]

I'm having simaliar problems with usb and mounting. It seems to be knoppix 3.8 I don't have the settings problems you do. I find 3.7 to be more stable

[s'tan]

do you use knoppix 3.7 with kernel 2.6.9? does internet work?

[codeconfused]

I had no problems with 3.7 with 2.6.9 most all of my headaches came with 3.8 but I have worked those all out with apt-get dist-upgrade

[s'tan]

you're right. i was anxious to wait for your reply so i installed knoppix 3.7 with kernel 2.6.9 and i've got an access to internet.

however, i still don't get how come that kernel 2.6.9 supports this modem and 2.6.11 doesn't?? it would be undestandable if i'm talking about some kernel 2.7.x, but come on - this is kernel 0.0.2 version higher than 2.6.9 .

another thing. you said you've upgraded knoppix.
do you mean from knopix 3.7 you used apt-get upgrade? and everything worked fine once you've upgraded the whole version?
i'm asking because i was told not to do this because as of knoppix 3.8 the old kernel 2.4.x was thrown out, so there might be problems.
if you remember, how heavy the upgrade was (in MB)?

and thanks for the rest . owe ya

[codeconfused]

I did a clean 3.8 install then did the "apt-get update" then "apt-get upgrade" then added some programs I wanted with "apt-get install" added about 10 programs like quanta, kvirc....etc I had no flash drive or floppy mounting So then I did "apt-get dist-upgrade" This is when I got my flash usb working The dist-upgrade did 1 thing... it removed 1 program ( I forget the name but it was short like vdr????) USB is different in 3.8 my flash drive is uba1 where as in 3.7 it was the normal sda1 The upgrade was about 38 meg

I have 3.7 on my other HD Thank god for removable HD brackets I may try to do a dist-upgrade on that HD.. it's ready to go....making lots of noise. I had it on my server for a year with loads of traffic going thru it.

[s'tan]

ok .
now you told me that you did upgrade from 3.8, i am no longer in mood to reverse again to 3.8 .
i'll try dist upgrade from 3.7 instead. i think it should work fine.