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Smart Link software modems

This page describes how to enable support for Smart Link PCI and USB software modems on Debian systems.

slmodem is a driver for software modems, supporting:

Supported devices are listed at the end of this page. The driver consists of two components:

  1. slmodemd - Application daemon

  2. Hardware-specific Linux kernel module, either:
    • snd-atiixp-modem (ATI IXP 150/200/250, ALSA)

    • snd-intel8x0m (AMD-768 / Intel ICH / NVidia MCP/2/2S/3 / SiS 7013, ALSA)

    • snd-via82xx-modem (VIA VT82xx, ALSA)

    • slamr (SmartPCI56, proprietary)

    • slusb (SmartUSB56, proprietary)

{i} sl-modem-daemon is in non-free due to inclusion of binary-only components (modem/dsplibs.o, drivers/amrlibs.o) within slmodemd.

<!> This software is only available for the x86 and x86-64 architectures (Debian i386 and AMD64 ports respectively).

Installation

  1. Add a "non-free" component to /etc/apt/sources.list for your Debian version. For example:

    # Debian 7 "Wheezy"
    deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

    or

    # Debian 6.0 "Squeeze"
    deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
  2. Update the list of available packages and install the sl-modem-daemon package:

    aptitude update && aptitude install sl-modem-daemon

    DebianTesting (Jessie) only: amd64 users are required to enable Multiarch:

    dpkg --add-architecture i386 && aptitude update
    aptitude install sl-modem-daemon:i386
  3. The slmodem daemon uses USA as its default country. If required, adjust the country setting:

    dpkg-reconfigure sl-modem-daemon -plow
  4. The slmodem daemon is started after package installation. If your device is supported by the snd-atiixp-modem, snd-intel8x0m or snd-via82xx-modem module, nothing further is required. Skip to usage below.

SmartPCI56 and SmartUSB56 devices

For these devices, proprietary Linux kernel modules are required to be compiled and installed.

Debian 7 "Wheezy"

  1. Install the relevant linux-headers and sl-modem-dkms packages:

    aptitude install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') sl-modem-dkms
    DKMS will build the Smart Link modules for your system.
  2. Restart the slmodem daemon:

    service sl-modem-daemon restart

Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" (i386 only)

  1. Install the relevant linux-headers and sl-modem-source packages:

    aptitude -r install linux-headers-2.6-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') sl-modem-source

    This will also install the recommended dkms package. DKMS will build the Smart Link modules for your system.

  2. Restart the slmodem daemon:

    service sl-modem-daemon restart

Usage

Your modem should now be accessible via the /dev/ttySL0 character device. Refer to your PPP dialer's documentation to configure it as appropriate.

Known Issues

See bugs reported on sl-modem.

Supported Devices

snd-atiixp-modem

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo snd-atiixp-modem in Debian 3.2.0 (3.2.41-2+deb7u2) kernel images:

snd-intel8x0m

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo snd-intel8x0m in Debian 3.2.0 (3.2.41-2+deb7u2) kernel images:

snd-via82xx-modem

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo snd-via82xx-modem in Debian 3.2.0 (3.2.41-2+deb7u2) kernel images:

slamr

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo slamr built from wheezy/sl-modem-dkms:

slusb

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/USB explains how to identify a USB device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo slusb built from wheezy/sl-modem-dkms:

See Also


CategoryHardware