Problems with Smartlink Modem

[cdgoldin]

I have a (Windows 7 and Linux Mint 17.1) dual-boot system with a Smartlink v92 modem.

When I installed and/or upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17.0, Mint 17.1 and Mint 17.2, booting into Linux resulted in my modem being taken "off-hook" (and thus tying up the telephone line until I shut down Linux or unplugged the line). This didn't occur with Ubuntu 12.04, so it appears to be something introduced in 14.04, which is the current Mint base.

I have also verified that it occurs when "live booting" from the installation CD, and thus is not the result of something amiss in my installation. I have also verified that this does NOT occur with a Motorola SM56 modem, or a (generic) PCI-SoftV92 modem.

The "solution" (to the "off-hook" problem) was finally discovered to be installing the driver according to the procedure found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Dialu ... /Smartlink. I have no idea if it actually made the modem usable, as I don't yet have a fax program or dialer that works with Linux.

However, this "solution" only worked with Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17.0 and Mint 17.1, but NOT Mint 17.2! (Actually, the "off-hook" problem didn't return when I upgraded from 17.1 to 17.2, until I subsequently updated the kernel from 3.13.0-37 to 3.16.0-38). For some reason that I don't understand, following the identical procedure for installing the driver resulted in a multitude of errors!

Here is what I tried (with Mint 17.2), and the unhappy results:

-sudo apt-get install sl-modem-source sl-modem-daemon
-sudo module-assistant auto-install sl-modem

This step FAILED with “module-assistant not found”, so I did

-sudo apt-get install module-assistant
-sudo module-assistant auto-install sl-modem

This FAILED with a meaningless message saying the compilation (?) had failed, nothing more.

So I followed the "Fiesty 7.04" procedure specified in the article:

-mkdir slmodemtmp
-cd slmodemtmp/
-wget http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/package ... 505.tar.gz
-tar -xvf slmodem-2.9.11-20070505.tar.gz
-sudo cp slmodem-2.9.11-20070505/* /usr/src/modules/sl-modem/ -r # Now the sources are updated

BUT this resulted in ERROR: “/usr/src/modules/sl-modem/ NOT A DIRECTORY"! so I did:

-sudo mkdir /usr/src/modules
-sudo mkdir /usr/src/modules/sl-modem
-sudo cp slmodem-2.9.11-20070505/* /usr/src/modules/sl-modem/ -r # Now the sources are updated
-sudo touch /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/config.h # Compile-fix

And then I continued with:

-sudo module-assistant auto-install sl-modem

Which STILL FAILED with the same meaningless message saying the compilation had failed, nothing more.

So I followed the alternate "Fiesty 7.04" procedure specified in the article:

-check http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink/ for a newer source package and use that one instead.

There were about ten more recent packages. I selected the latest one:

-wget http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/package ... 321.tar.gz
-tar -xvf slmodem-2.9.11-20110321.tar.gz
-sudo mkdir /usr/src/modules
-sudo mkdir /usr/src/modules/sl-modem
-sudo cp slmodem-2.9.11-20110321/* /usr/src/modules/sl-modem/ -r # Now the sources are updated
-sudo touch /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/config.h # Compile-fix*
-sudo module-assistant auto-install sl-modem

This time the "compile" appeared to complete successfully! So I continued:

-sudo depmod -a (this updates the list of available modules)
-sudo gedit /etc/default/sl-modem-daemon
Insuring that SLMODEMD_COUNTRY=USA
-sudo modprobe slamr

This resulted in:
ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:809 kmod_module_insert_module() could not find
module by name='slamr'
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'slamr': Function not implemented

At this stage I am stuck. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Meanwhile I've gone back to 17.1