Modems supported by the Lucent driver

This section is for you if the output of scanModem tells you something like: 'The modem has a supported Lucent/Agere DSP (digital signal processing) chipset.'. You will be able to use either a driver from the "restricted-modules" package called ltmodem, or a opensource driver called martian_modem.

Gutsy Gibbon 7.10

The ltmodem driver does not work, install the martian_modem driver.

See PanDan entry/post at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=328050 ... for a successful setup of the martian_modem driver on an internal Lucent winmodem

Feisty Fawn 7.04

From Feisty Fawn (and possibly previously) the generic restricted modules package does not include the ltmodem drivers, you will need to install the linux-386 package and then follow the instructions in the Pre Feisty Fawn section.

# sudo apt-get install linux-386
# sudo reboot

Pre Feisty Fawn 7.04

To check that the necessary package is installed, use your package manager, e.g. Synaptic or Adept. You need to look for a package, which is called linux-restricted-modules-ARCH, where ARCH is the last part of the $ uname -r output, i.e. your kernel flavor. If it is not installed yet, install it there.

Setup steps for ltmodem

• In a terminal type

    $ sudo sh -c "echo ltserial >> /etc/modules"
    $ sudo sh -c "echo ltmodem >> /etc/modules"

  to add them to the module autoloading list.
• Since udev rewrites /dev on each boot, and some dialup programs rely on the existence of /dev/modem, you need to have a symlink created on boot (from /dev/ttyLTM0 to /dev/modem). To do this, create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules, and put these lines in it:

    #ltmodem
    KERNEL="ttyLTM0", SYMLINK="modem"

• Now load the drivers for the first time:

    $ sudo modprobe ltserial
    $ sudo modprobe ltmodem

  This should have created the device /dev/modem and you can now go on to configure your dialup connection.

• No, I get an error about "FATAL: module not found" for this step - then follow the Feisty Fawn instructions

• Note for "5.04 Hoary" users: Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary was shipped with kernel 2.6.10, which has some problems with these modules. To fix, change the grub boot commands /boot/grub/menu.lst as follows (pci=routeirq is new):

    ## ## Start Default Options ##
    ## default kernel options
    ## default kernel options for automagic boot options
    ## If you want special options for specifiv kernels use kopt_x_y_z
    ## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
    ## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
    # kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro pci=routeirq

  Do not forget to update grub: $ sudo update-grub

• For kppp users: if kppp return an error regarding the impossibility to create a lock file, it should be necessary to edit the file /etc/ppp/options commenting out the noauth line.

Martian, an alternative to ltmodem

On 6.06.1, It's possible that as part of trying to load the ltserial module, you'll get the error: "FATAL: Error inserting ltserial (...): Invalid argument".

In this case, Installing the Martian driver may be a solution to get your Lucent winmodem to work. First, you'll need to follow the instructions above to install build-essential and your kernel headers packages, to prepare to compile the driver.

Download the most recent version with "full" in the name, from here: http://www.barrelsoutofbond.org/downloads/martian/

Instructions for installing the file software are in the "INSTALL" file. Until someone makes an "init" script for it, There is an additional step needed to be able to use the modem after you boot up.

sudo martian_helper --daemon

If your software expects the modem to be located at /dev/modem, you may also need to run this command:

   sudo ln -s /dev/ttySM0 /dev/modem

Hopefully "Martian" will become an official Ubuntu package to make this whole process easier.

There is also a simple Tutorial on the Ubuntu Forums (not working yet for 64 bit machines)

Updated Agere Instructions

More up-to-date instructions for Lucent Agere modems are available at DialupModemHowto/Lucent/Agere.