Internet Connectivity

If you have KDE Installed



Most home users still rely upon dial-up connection through the basic telephone line to get to the Internet. To use dial-up connection from PCQLinux, open up the Start menu and select Extra>Internet>KPPP which will open a dialer for you. 

Internal Modems If you have an internal modem, then you need to manually link to the COM port that the internal modem is set on to /dev/modem. For example, if your modem is on COM4, you need to do the following once, from the terminal. # ln —s /dev/ttyS3 /dev/modem Note that the ttyS is always one less than the COM port number.

In the dialer window, click on the “Setup” button; this will open the account setup window, which allows you to configure your ISP account. Click on the “New” button to create a new dial up connection. A dialog box will appear asking you to create the connection. You have a choice of wizards or dialogue box. Wizards do not support Indian ISPs. So, select the Dialog button. Now give any name in “Connection Name” text box, add the dial-up number of your ISP, and click on Ok.

Next, you need to configure your modem. For this, again select setup from KPPP dialer and click on the Modem tab this time. Here, you will find an option “Query Modem”. Clicking on it will start a search for an external modem on your Linux machine. It will detect your modem and your dialup Internet connection is ready for you. 

Just start KPPP again and give your username and password to connect to your ISP. 

Without KDE



If you do not have KDE installed, here is a more generic approach.

Winmodems If you have a Winmodem installed, including the famous (or infamous) Motorola SM56 based one, then you are out of luck with PCQLinux. Motorola has stopped supporting them, and these modems are not currently useable on RedHat Linux 8.0, on which PCQLinux 8.0 is based.

To set up a modem connection in PCQLinux, launch the Internet Configuration Wizard from the Start Menu>System Tools.

Select modem connection and click on Forward. The wizard will try to auto detect the modem. If it fails, for the Modem Device select /dev/ttyS0 if your modem is connected to COM1 serial port or select /dev/ttyS1 for COM2. 

In the “Select Provider” screen, for the Phone Number fill in the phone number of your ISP. Subsequently, fill in the Provider Name (can be anything), and the login and password for your Internet account. In the next screen, clicking on Apply will launch the Network configuration utility. Highlight the modem connection and click on Activate to dial to your ISP. 

In case the modem hangs up when attempting to dial, click on the Edit button. Then, click on Advanced and type in the following AT command for the Modem Initialization String

AT&FX1



Henceforth you can dial into the Internet using the Network Configuration utility which can be launched from start menu>System Settings>Network. 

Direct LAN Connection 



If you are on an office/company network and are supposed to connect to the Internet through the LAN, then the following is the method to hook up to the Net. 

Launch the Network Configuration utility from start menu>System Settings>Network. 

Highlight eth0 and click on Edit. If you are running a DHCP server on your network (enquire with your network administrator), click the option “Automatically Obtain IP address settings with:” and select DHCP from the drop down menu. If you are not running a DHCP server, click the option “Statically Set IP Addresses” and fill in the values for the Address (say 192.168.1.89), Subnet Mask (say 255.255.255.0) and Default gateway Address (say 192.168.1.1). Don’t enter arbitrary values, which may lead to IP address conflicts with other machines on your network. For the correct values, consult your network administrator. When done, in the main screen, highlight eth0 and click on Deactivate and then on Activate.

Connecting to Cable Internet Services



Many cable service providers are providing Internet connections by setting up a private LAN for the subscribers. A popularly used accounting software for such cable connections is Elitcore’s Cyberoam software. Along with PCQLinux 8.0, we have bundled the Cyberoam client for 24 hours connections. Before setting up the client, set up your network connection (as described above) with the IP address, subnet

mask and gateway address provided by your cable service provider. 

Now, to set up the Cyberoam client, open a terminal window within X window (start menu>System Tools>Terminal) and issue the following command.

#24onlineClient -s

When prompted, enter the IP address of the server/gateway as provided by your cable service provider. Enter y for all other prompts. Once setup, every time you need to connect to the Internet you can launch the Cyberoam client as:

#24onlineClient -u

Here is the login name assigned to you by your service provider. When prompted, key in the password for your

login. 

Sanjay Majumder and Shekhar Govindrajan