Joe(theWordy)Philbrook (2010-04-28 08:28):
It would appear that on Apr 28, Rogutės Sparnuotos did say: <...>
wvdial will not touch any of your network related configs (only the ppp ones), so if you will not use any other tools, your broadband will be safe. At least after reboot.
Good. Then I can afford 'some' empirical testing after all. ;-)
From what I've found online, and what little I can remember, wvdial should be available for just about any distro. So if I keep it's set up fairly simple, I should be able to clone a successful implementation to the other Linux installed on my multi-boot laptop.
So yeah, as long as you don't count set-up utilities such as wvdialconf, and if need be, minicom, I don't plan on using any other dialup tools...
Since you haven't tested your modem yet, the first thing to do would be running minicom or some other serial terminal on your /dev/ttyS?, issuing the ATZ command and see if you get OK. There is no point worrying about anything else as long as you are not sure you have a working modem.
wvdialconf has to be run only once. It should ask you for the telephone number, user and password.
That's good to know. From what I read in the man page I was under the impression that it would only configure the modem part of the wvdial.conf and that I'd have to manually edit in the login data...
I am giving no guarantees - its been a while... <...>
But, if you do not test dialing-up at home, it is likely that something will go wrong when you try connecting at your sister's (and there won't be any internet connection to seek help).
Absolutely. That was my plan. Else I wouldn't have worried about some brain flatulence causing me to accidentally have the Ethernet cable connected, while wvdial was active.
I suppose you've setup your broadband in either rc.conf or netcfg. If that is the case, know that these setups are Archlinux specific and there is basically no software which will touch these. So you always get what you have specified in rc.conf after a reboot. And you _can_ have lots of modems and lots of ethernet cables connected to you computer, and still have your broadband working. With most setups, data packets to the internet go through the default route (try running 'route'), which is changed after a successful pppd connection and changed back after it closes (this is not wvdial specific). -- -- Rogutės Sparnuotos