Hi Folks,

I downloaded and untarred the driver binaries for the smart link modem in my Toshiba Satellite A55-S326, which is working fine under SuSE 9.1. I am able to boot Knoppix 3.6 and I have the drivers stored on the hdd in /tmp/modem directory. But the command 'modprobe /cdrom2.loop/tmp/modem/slamr' returns not able to find the module (it's looking in the /lib/modules directory). When I try to copy the driver to /KNOPPIX/lib/modules, I get an error 'read-only file system'. How can I boot and configure my laptop using Knoppix 3.6 if I have the drivers without having to build them from source?

This is an interesting problem, since all the computers sold nowadays come with winmodems or modems that use software rather than hardware for signal processing. One way is to build it from source using 'make', 'make install', but that fails since Knoppix 3.6 or Knoppix 3.9 do not have all the kernel sources (about 35 megs of overhead). I have tried building it, but there were so many errors generated that I could not scroll in the shell to see them all. To compound the problem, I am booting Knoppix from iso stored on the hdd using the cheat codes 'knoppix bootfrom=/dev/hda3/tmp/knoppix36/K*.iso'. There are three components involved 'slamr.o', 'slmodemd', and 'slusb.o'. What I need to do is to load the kernel module 'modprobe slamr' for the PCI modem, copy the modem deamon to '/usr/sbin' directory, and then configure it. When I launch the deamon, it will create a symlink to the '/dev/ttySL0' for using kppp. It is important to setup the connection, because once you are able to connect, you have the option to setup the system in whichever way you see fit with tons of software available from the net. Without an Internet connection, you only have an expensive paper weight. A simple fix would be to go out and buy a stand alone external modem, or else install Knoppix on the hard drive, which may uninstall the other unfriendly OS. I wouldn't mind using it were it not for the rip-you-off business model that they and the Wall Street are so enamored by. I believe that the one way to go at this point is to create another, be it small, Knoppix dedicated partition that would have the necessary components.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Joseph Schiller

use /sbin/insmod instead of modprobe (give full path of modle file as an argument to insmod)