Hello, I just finished installing potato on my StarMax 3000/160, but when I unpacked and configured all of the packages, the modem stopped working! That is, "chat -v '' ATZ OK ATDT3546534" just gives "ATZ" and waits for the timeout, and pon writes the following to /var/log/messages:
[snip] chat: send (ATZ^M) chat: expect (OK) [waits for the timeout period] chat: alarm chat: Failed pppd: Exit. This is potato as of Friday morning (Std package set without conflicting perl-5.004 stuff, dpkg-ftp, and texinfo because of the conflict with tetex-base), using stock 2.2.10 built under LinuxPPC R4. (Because of perl breakage, I couldn't get the kernel tools and 2.2.9 PPC patch or I would have tried that.) Other notes on the installation: 1. I LOVE APT/DPKG/DSELECT!! This is my first time using Debian, and it is the most wonderful, truly amazing quantum leap in software management there is anywhere! Outstanding job, congratulations to everyone involved in that system. 2. More praise: pppconfig/pon/poff is the first ppp package I have seen which works out-of-box. The ppp-on/ppp-off scripts buried in R4 /usr/doc needed some non-obvious config changes which took a couple of hours to figure out, and kppp was a two-day nightmare that never did succeed. But the first time I tried pon it worked. Awesome! 3. Downloading a system over a modem takes a Very Long Time, which is okay, but causes an interesting problem with an unstable distro. (Even at 56K, but this is partially because of the wife's phone/net needs, which interrupted the download several times. :-) The first time I tried the Install step, about six packages failed to load because they were obsolete by the time I loaded them!! It would have been REALLY NICE if dselect/apt had TOLD me this and advised me to iterate on the Update/Select/Install procedure until achieving a complete system. Instead I figured ftp.debian.org was just missing the files, and tried changing the apt source, which trashed the 56 MB of packages I had downloaded!! This problem is highly non-obvious and I think makes for a required change in apt's error reporting, especially for modem users. (On the second try, about three files failed, but they were a different three, so I manually ftp'd in, figured out what had gone wrong and did the iteration- and had to download about 10% more material than would have been necessary if it all came clean the first time- packages were reving *that fast*! Ah, life on the bleeding edge... :-) 4. base2_2.tgz has a whole lotta man pages- BUT NO MAN! Whose idea was that? I mean, gzip -dc | more works, but again is non-obvious, and a bit ugly. 5. Any idea on how long it will take for this perl5 business to get straightened out? I mean, I expected unstable, but with so many perl-dependent packages, potato (and hence Debian PPC) is truly unusable in its current state. Too bad I trashed my R4 partitions to install it- but then, that's my fault for going with an unstable system. :-) Looking forward to a stable Debian with a functional modem, and to working with you guys to make it happen on PPC! Zeen, -Adam "...the firmament sheweth His handywork" (Ps 19:1) /// ............................................................__ ///| Adam "Cold Fusion" Powell IV Firmament Science & Engineering\\\///_| http://lyre.mit.edu/~powell/ Standing on the Solid State Rock\XX/ |MIGA
