Topic: Sparkcom ADSL PCI Modem

[tariqf]

I'm thinking of getting of getting a Sparkcom ADSL PCI Modem (conexant chipset) as it's the cheapest option I can find for an ADSL modem. I wonder if there is any way I could get this to work with e-smith, has anyone tried this?  I'd love to keep e-smith without having to route through a windows PC..

[Rick Jones]

AFAICT, this like many other ADLS PCI modems does not have any Linux drivers available. The only one I know of that is fully supported on Linux (including specifically e-smith) is the Pulsar card made by Traverse in Oz.

You can get it in the UK from www.msdist.co.uk, and it'll cost around £75 including shipping. You can email Traverse directly for driver support - e-smith needs a patch to operate correctly in UK PPoA mode.

My one's just arrived, I have yet to get it set up and working (hoping for no glitches in the process).

Rick Jones

[Rob Fornasari]

Rick,
 How has your Pulsar installation gone? Have Traverse been helpful?

Hope its worked out for you.

[Rick Jones]

Rob

[ update to info I emailed earlier - see below for why ]

It's all up and running "as we speak". Guy Ellis at Traverse was very helpful, he sent a driver, although it turned out to be compiled with the wong kernel headers. I decided to generate a driver myself using his online driver generator (adsl4linux.com), having found the correct headers - there's more than one version in different places on contribs.org! (I should post a new thread about this I think)

I first installed the driver manually, following his instructions - which are also in a pdf on the Traverse site and on the CD with the card. He's also told me where to add things to the system boot-time rc scripts so it will reload on boot-up; I've now made those changes and it all comes up again on reboot.

I'm not sure what would happen if I did a system re-config from the admin console, but I think the changes will survive as the modified rc files are not templated (AFAICS). I may try tweaking the config scripts to allow the Pulsar to be specified.

Before installing, I configured e-smith as a modem dial-up system, and then used the Stephen Noble (dungog) sever manager panel to disable the dialup. This allowed e-smith to configure my dialup login and password, which are then picked up by the ppp command that connects the Pulsar. ADSL in PPPoA mode is notionally a "dialup" system in the sense that it logs onto a remote host, but there is no actual dialing phase. This also meant the e-smith hooks for updating my dynamic DNS service operated unchanged.

However, I had a problem with upload speed, which was holding back outgoing email, and prevented me posting this to the board before. Turned out to be an MTU problem. The default was 1500, but it looks like BT ADSL likes 576, so I changed to that (in the pppd config file), which sorted it out.

So all-in-all pretty cool

If I manage to package up any script or template changes properly I'll try to post them, or put them on contribs.

Rick

[Rob Fornasari]

Glad it's all gone well. I should be recieving my unit shortly. Nice to know there's help at hand if it's needed, both from the manufacturer and satisfied users.

Have fun.

[Rick Jones]

One other possible problem I've run into is loss of link. This happened to me a couple of days ago, though I don't know if it was e-smith or the ISP that caused it. However, the link did not come back up, and I had to re-boot to get it to work again. Manually re-starting pppd didn't work.

This might have been a one-off, but my suspicion from the log messages is that the e-smith events don't handle it right, because they want to re-launch the dialler. When I've got time to play with taking the line down and up again I'll see what I can work out. I don't entirely understand the event logic in e-smith, which is a slight impediment !

Drop us a line if you have any problems getting your card up & running (can't say I guarantee to know the answers though!).

Cheers
Rick