[hsflinux] hsflinux conflict X/Nvidia drivers on RH9

[Chris Stump]

Hello,

I've been killing myself the past week trying to get the hsflinux modem 
drivers working with on my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop (Modem: Intel Corp. 
82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem). I'm running a custom 2.4.22 kernel. Everytime 
I tried wvdial on the CLI, I would get the following messages in 
/var/log/messages, or something like them:

Nov  9 13:00:49 kirby wvdial[3112]: WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.53
Nov  9 13:00:49 kirby wvdial[3112]: Initializing modem.
Nov  9 13:00:49 kirby wvdial[3112]: Sending: ATZ
Nov  9 13:00:49 kirby wvdial[3112]: ATZ
Nov  9 13:00:49 kirby wvdial[3112]: OK
Nov  9 13:00:49 kirby wvdial[3112]: Sending: ATM2
Nov  9 13:00:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: ATM2
Nov  9 13:00:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: OK
Nov  9 13:00:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: Modem initialized.
Nov  9 13:00:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: Sending: ATDT <phone number>
Nov  9 13:00:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: Waiting for carrier.
Nov  9 13:00:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: ATDT<phone number>
Nov  9 13:01:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: Timed out while dialing.  Trying again.
Nov  9 13:01:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: Sending: <phone number>
Nov  9 13:01:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: Waiting for carrier.
Nov  9 13:01:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: NO CARRIER
Nov  9 13:01:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: ATDT <phone number>
Nov  9 13:01:50 kirby wvdial[3112]: No Carrier!  Trying again.
Nov  9 13:01:51 kirby wvdial[3112]: Sending: ATDT <phone number>
Nov  9 13:01:51 kirby wvdial[3112]: Waiting for carrier.
Nov  9 13:01:51 kirby wvdial[3112]: OK
Nov  9 13:01:51 kirby wvdial[3112]: ATDT <phone number>
Nov  9 13:02:24 kirby wvdial[3112]: Disconnecting at Sun Nov  9 13:02:24 
2003

Basically, the modem would dial, but never connect.

Then today I thought maybe it was my kernel, so I tried dropping down to 
  the RedHat kernel that is still on my system (2.4.20-20.9). When I 
rebooted, X did not start (as expected) because my Nvidia drivers 
wouldn't work since they are compiled for the other kernel. So, on the 
CLI I recompiled my hsfmodem drivers for the 2.4.20 kernel, ran wvdial, 
and wouldn't you know, my modem worked. I could connect...I could SSH to 
other machines, etc. I rebooted/tested this many times and each time it 
worked without a hitch.

I thought I had fixed my problem. I thought I just needed to use the 
other kernel. So, I recompiled my Nvidia drivers for the 2.4.20 kernel, 
rebooted, logged into X, and tried wvdial again. This time it *did not 
work.* I got the same messages as noted above. I had a hunch it might be 
X/Nvidia messing things up. So, I rebooted into the 2.4.22 kernel, which 
brought me directly to the CLI (because now Nvidia was configured for 
the other kernel). I recompiled hsfmodem, and and tried wvdial again, 
and it worked! No connection problems.

Of course, I'd rather use my custom kernel, so I returned to my old 
setup. As expected, my modem won't work in X.

Obviously something weird is happening between X/Nvidia and the hsfmodem 
drivers. In all the research I've done trying to get these drivers to 
work, I've seen numerous posts by people using the same hardware setup 
as me and RH9. Some have had success using the hsfmodem drivers right 
out of the box. Others, like me, have struggled. Maybe those who have 
success right away aren't using Nvida cards while those who are having a 
lot of trouble are?? Its just a thought, but I definitely think this 
warrants investigation.