Re: wvdial problems

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.misc, in article
<5ii8mdF3p6n0eU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Gretch wrote:

Moe Trin <ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There is a failure mode where the responses only occur at 19
second intervals. This indicates a serial port IRQ problem. I
_think_ that the earlier posts of the wvdial output suggests this
is not the case.

I'm inclined to agree with you, because the modem works flawlessly
when connecting to a different ISP.

OK - that basically rules out the modem. Other than phone-numbers, is
there any obvious difference in the ppp scripts?

Did they hang up on you, or was that the result of you doing a ^C?

I did a ^C to interrupt the repeated dialings caused by the "persist"
option, but it seems to my limited understanding as if the ISP's peer
(actually, the "contracted authentication service" according to their
Support people) is dropping the connection before the default (? since
no man page due to small HD) lcp-max-configure 10 is reached.

OK - you said in your initial post that

]Recently, I've subscribed to a new ISP where the local dialup number
]works fine with an M$ dialup connection, but fails using wvdial:

so this _number_ works - but what we're seeing is them not responding
to a Linux LCP ConfReq. Is this the same box, or a different one?

have seen some PoPs take as long as ten seconds (3 or 4 'sent [LCP
ConfReq' cycles] before they pull their finger out and start talking
back.

I suspect that's the case here, but I've tried the lcp-restart 10
option in an effort to delay the 3-second interval, but it causes the
Modem hangup before the second "sent [LCP ...", re-enforcing the
perception that it's the ISP terminating the connection for some
arcane reason.

I have seen reports of a peer shutting down because of a disagreement
in options, but NORMALLY it has come back and tried to tell you that
it wants a different option (LCP ConfNak). We're not seeing this.

I posted a request to an M$ newsgroup hoping for a method to log the
details of the successful dialup that occurs using that OS.

What version of windoze? I haven't used windoze in decades, but from
my notes:

-----------------
c:\windoze\ppplog.txt file (very large)
In your DUN folder, right click your ISP's icon and choose Properties.
Select the Server Types tab. On that window, you should ONLY have
Enable software compression checked, and TCP/IP in protocols. You
will see a box that says Record a log file for this connection. That
box, if checked, will start the ppplog.txt file. It can be used for
troubleshooting serious protocol problems, but most users will never
need that log. A word of caution, don't post that log without first
editing out your login and password information, which appears in
plain text. If you don't have a check in that log box, and you do
have a ppplog.txt file, check it's date. It can be deleted if is
old information.
-------------------
Try turning on PPP logging. I'm not sure offhand how to do this in XP;
you might try the Win2k method:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];234014
Yes, that's it, it also works in WinXP Pro.
-------------------

I should mention that the windoze ppp log is intentionally bloated
beyond a lot of people's tolerance - mainly to scare away the users.
I don't know of anyone reading this group that can make a lot of
sense out of it, and only one person I occasionally see posting in the
comp.protocols.ppp newsgroup (Patrick Klos) who may make an attempt to
translate it.

No, this should be working.

Let's loose the 'persist' option too.

I both respect and trust your judgement, but am reluctant to conclude
a modem/serial problem unless this particular ISP is addressing some
feature that the modem/serial/pppd combination is incapable of
completing for some reason; it works fine with other ISPs.

Well, something is certainly screwy. Looking at the log below, I don't
see anything obvious.

RH7.1 Linux version 2.4.20-28.7 (yes, ancient OS on an ancient box with
a tiny HD, used solely as an iptables-protected router with no other
services for a LAN; I will endure the inevitable scolding in order to
solve the dialup problem with this one ISP, thanks.

#include <std.lecture.h>

Hmmm, didn't realize that kernel made it back to 7.1 - it was released
around Christmas 2003 for 7.2 and 7.3, but 7.1 got 2.4.20-27.7 about
a week earlier.

I've assaulted this box from outside to my satisfaction and it drops
all but related, established packets to other machines on the LAN with
more modern, robust OS's)

Sounds like you've got it bolted down OK.

$ pppd --version
pppd version 2.4.1 #yupper, also ancient
[compton ~]$ zgrep ' ppp-' rpms.7.[123]-i3* | cut -c1-17,50-
rpms.7.1-i386.gz: 173951 Apr 8 23:35 ppp-2.4.0-2.i386.rpm
rpms.7.2-i386.gz: 182462 Sep 7 17:00 ppp-2.4.1-2.i386.rpm
rpms.7.3-i386.gz: 194597 Apr 17 04:49 ppp-2.4.1-3.i386.rpm
[compton ~]$ zgrep ' ppp-' 7.*errata* | cut -c1-23,55-
7.2-errata.12.31.03.gz: 194597 Apr 17 2002 ppp-2.4.1-3.i386.rpm
[compton ~]$

I suspect you've got a later release. Look at /etc/redhat-release - not
that it impacts this... wait a minute. RH7.2 had a problem with 2.4.1-2
and I can't remember WTF it was. The errata fixed it... OK, the spec
file says it was something to do with a b0rken "improvement" they added
for 'callback' mode. I don't _think_ it's a factor here, but check the
output of the command 'rpm -q ppp' and see which package you have.

ttyS1 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

OK

$ cat /proc/interrupts

Won't show up unless some application is using the modem.

I'm not sure how to identify the modem itself without excavating it
from the box (and perhaps not even then), but I'll do that if you think
it's necessary. It's a card rather than integral w/ the backplane, but
there's no info about it in /proc/pci, or /var/log/{messages,boot.log}
that I can find.

Sounds like an ISA modem then. Other than knowing the "right" init
string, I don't know that it matters. If you have minicom installed,
you can try running that, and looking at the outputs of 'atiN'
(where N is zero to some number - maybe 6 to 9) and see if that provides
a clue. On many modems, the ATIn commands provide details about the
modem, including (perhaps) make/model.

Aug 15 22:29:24 linux0 chat[4034]: send (AT&F0S11=50^M)
Aug 15 22:29:25 linux0 chat[4034]: expect (OK)
Aug 15 22:29:25 linux0 chat[4034]: AT&F0S11=50^M^M
Aug 15 22:29:25 linux0 chat[4034]: OK
Aug 15 22:29:25 linux0 chat[4034]: -- got it

OK - not an IRQ problem.

Aug 15 22:29:43 linux0 chat[4034]: CONNECT
Aug 15 22:29:43 linux0 chat[4034]: -- got it
Aug 15 22:29:43 linux0 chat[4034]: send (\dc^M^M)

Hmmm...

Aug 11 11:46:59 apraphoe chat[13969]: CONNECT
Aug 11 11:46:59 apraphoe chat[13969]: -- got it
Aug 11 11:46:59 apraphoe chat[13969]: send (\d)

$ cat /etc/ppp/dialscript
ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' "" AT&F0S11=50 OK ATDTxxxxxxx CONNECT \d\c

Not exactly sure why the '\dc' got sent - the '\c' is supposed to exit
without sending a carriage return. Try quoting the '\d\c' at the end
of the dial-script (change the end of the line to be CONNECT '\d\c').

Old guy
.

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