To connect to the Internet you will first have to configure your system with your ISP connection details.

The easiest way to do this is to use the `wvdial' utility which is included with most distributions to set up a PPP connection. You will need to be logged in as the `root' user in order to perform the following tasks.

Many distributions of Linux include nice GUI tools to configure wvdial - among them Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE. If yours does use it as it will make things easier for you.

Whether you use such a GUI tool or you choose to create and edit the configuration file manually using a text editor you must remember to ensure that you configure the Stupid Mode option to on as our modems offer only the minimum necessary output when you connect.

If you do not have a GUI tool for managing your ISP connection setups you can easily edit the wvdial configuration file manually.

If you have not already set up wvdial to recognise your modem you can run wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf which will automatically scan all of your serial ports to find modems and add the correct init strings for your modem to the /etc/wvdial.conf configuration file.

Once you have done this you can edit the configuration file to add details for connecting to an ISP.

Simply start your prefered test editor and open the file /etc/wvdial.conf. Then add a section like the following for UKLINUX NET:

[Dialer UKLINUX]
Username = [username]
Password = [password]
Phone = [number]
Inherits = Dialer Defaults
Stupid mode = 1

Where [username] is replaced with your UKLINUX NET username (remember you should not include the .uklinux.net part), [password] is replaced with your account password and [number] is replaced with the access number you are using.

The standard UK local rate access number is 0845 6042086.
If you are a Surftime subscriber you will have been informed of the number already.

In addition to specifying your username and password in the wvdial configuration file you will need to configure them in either /etc/ppp/pap-secrets or /etc/ppp/chap-secrets as appropriate for the authentication method you prefer to use - we support both although you should note that we do not suport the MS-CHAP variant. Note that wvdial should work without this - we're just being very cautious.

You will also have to configure pppd (the process that actually handles the connection once it has been established) with the necessary information to enable it to use the connection properly.

To do this you should edit the /etc/ppp/options file.

As a minimum we recommend that you add the following options:

noauth
defaultroute
lock
ipcp-accept-local
ipcp-accept-remote
usepeerdns
passive

If you want to force PAP authentication you can also add the option refuse-chap. Similarly if you want to force CHAP authentication you can add the refuse-pap option. Neither of these should be necessary with wvdial however.

You can also specify the usepeerdns option if you prefer not to manually configure your system to use our DNS servers all the time - unless you have some other method of resolving the names of local systems this is a good idea.

Normally only the `root' user can start or end a network connection. This is because it is an alteration to a base part of the system configuration on a real network aware OS like Linux and so should not happen except that it is specifically authorised.

It is very simple to satisfy this requirement using a utility such as sudo which permits you to elevate your privileges for specific commands - obviously you need to ensure that sudo is actually installed to do this. To enable you to start your internet connection using sudo you need to log in as root and run visudo.

Then insert the following:

[user]	ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/wvdial, /usr/sbin/pppd root

replacing [user] with your login name on your local system.

You should then be able to start wvdial and connect to the Internet without having to login separately as root by entering the command sudo wvdial UKLINUX &

Do note that visudo uses similar keystrokes to vi. Before you try using visudo you must check the vi manpage (man vi) to learn the basic keystrokes.

You can enter :help in visudo to access help which details them as well.

Problems with WinModems

Unfortunately, some internal modems, mainly PCI models, require a rather large software driver called Windows! They are referred to as software modems or WinModems and companies that produce try to save a few pennies by not including in hardware the necessary intelligence to actually be a modem.

There is a project in existance to try and develop Linux drivers for some of these modems however the modem manufacturers (or to be more accurate the producers of the chips that go inside them) have historically been very stupid in that they refuse to release the necessary data to allow the Open Source community to write drivers for them. This means that development has been rather slow.

For the latest information on developments in this area see www.linmodems.org

There are a couple of exceptions to this "no PCI modems" rule. They are those PCI modems which feature a complete hardware UART on the board - which is rather rare, to our knowledge only one or two models from MultiTech feature such a hardware UART.

Lucent Technologies have commissioned a software driver for PCI modems based upon their chipset however we believe that it only works with 2 older releases of the Linux kernel and thus should not be used.

We still recommend that you use an ISA modem for now if you need an internal one.