[Scottish] several linux problems

[Colin McKinnon]

On Tuesday 18 December 2007 16:49, Kyle Gordon wrote:
> On Tuesday 18 December 2007 14:22:23 Richard Wright wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've got a few problems I was wondering if anyone could help with?
> >
> > The hardware is a toshiba laptop from 2000 with 1.2ghz, 512m ram, 20gb
> > hdd, a dial up pci card and a lan card. OS is slackware 11. The ctrl key
> > doesn't work, so I'm sending it off to get fixed before I sort anything
> > else.
> >
> > 1)Connecting to the internet
> >
> > I've successfully installed linux a number of times now, but I'm not sure
> > how to get it hooked up to the intenet.
> >
> > There are several internet access points I can use:
> >
> > a) A dial up connection at my parents home.
>
> Forget dialup. You'll regret it if you choose this method.

I was goinf to argue this one, then I tried to rember the last time I used 
dial-up (a painful experience on a friends machine a year ago, I've not had 
dial-up configured on any of my machines for about 4 years now).

>
> > b) ADSL at the university (will probably require legit login ID)
>
> Speak to Network Services at the uni for login details

? I suspect the UNI is too small to be an ADSL provider and too large to be an 
ADSL user. Surely more likely that its just a routed connection over 
ethernet/wifi?

>
> > c) A wi-fi connection in my flat from my neighbours. May be encrypted.
>
> If they give you the password, then you're onto a winner.

It's polite to ask regardless.

>
> > 3)Kernel configuration
> > A lot of the hardware doesn't seem to register on linux. Specifically the
> > internal dial up modem doesn't seem to register. This may be because the
> > kernel is not properly configured. I've had a go at kernel configuration,
> > using a menu, but most of the options are not intuitively named. I'm
> > looking at "the linux kernel" which is good theory, but it doesn't
> > directly solve the problem at hand.
>
? Kernels aren't really interested in modems (except for those nasty hardware 
modems) have you tried pointing minicom at each serial port and seeing if you 
get a response to AT?

C.