The SmartLink modem drivers appear to be almost abandoned by the responsible parties. While work continues on an Ubuntu version of the drivers, the latest from the technion site (3/21/2011, slamr) still fails to connect, spewing "NO CARRIER" messages until stopped manually. As for the USB version, support has apparently been ended altogether. Furthermore, the proprietary component has not kept up with kernel developments and cannot be maintained by anyone but LSI.
Although Barry has included both drivers in Wary, the PCI driver spews "NO CARRIER" and the USB driver spews initialization and shutdown "disaster" messages and may corrupt the data (pupsave) file. Beyond those issues, the PCI modems apparently require reloading of the slamr module and restarting of the user-space daemon (slmodemd) for each connection after the first in a bootup session. Omitting those drivers avoids subjecting users to those risks, which would damage Lucid Pup's reputation for stability.
Note, however, that ALSA modems that use the slmodemd user-space component are still supported.
The HCFPCI driver is omitted because it requires each user to pay the developers US$15 to activate a usable data rate beyond 14.4 kbs. If anyone needs or can use the HCFPCI driver at that speed (or can pay), please tell me and I can add it. My thinking, though, is to avoid suggesting that HCF modems are usable without making the payment, which might be difficult from some parts of the world.
I have tested examples of all of the modems except for HDA modems, modems requiring the non-HDA Agere (agrsm) drivers, and the Intel 537s. Note that the newest driver for the 537s does not support the Dell version of 537EP, making mine useful only for verifying that the variant selector still works.
Regarding the HSF- and Agere HDA drivers: I have my doubts whether they can work, but have no way to experiment with them. There may be mismatches between the versions of ALSA used by Lupu and those expected by the drivers. I believe I saw that the Agere was coded for ALSA 1.0.20 and that the HSF may need a patch to the Intel HDA driver(s) associated with the target ALSA version. Lucid Pup has 1.0.24. Although we could experiment with patching for the HSF HDA driver, my only hope for the Agere is that the newly released version of the HDA driver might help. Beyond that, I have no idea what to do about the Agere HDA mismatch, other than wait for further updates from the developer. Advice from ALSA experts is hereby requested.
EDIT: Peebee reports that the Agere HDA driver works in all recent warys, including 5.1.4.1, but still does not work in Lucid Pup. They all use ALSA 1.0.21a. Unless there is something I have missed about setting up the driver, it appears that the difference in ALSA versions and possibly kernel versions might account for the different behavior.
EDIT: I have concluded that the Agere HDA modem driver cannot be used in lucid pup 5.2.8 because the current ALSA version is different from the version that came with kernel 2.6.33.2 (1.0.24.2 vs. 1.0.21). The driver requires the versions to match. For the future (Three-Headed Dog), we should avoid changing the ALSA version from that of the kernel if we are to have working Agere HDA modem support.
I think I will add logic to the packages containing the Agere 11c11040 driver to prevent installation of the driver if the ALSA versions differ, as shown by these commands:
- cat /proc/asound/version
alsactl --version
Richard