I set up my system to use Sarge because of the reputation for Debian stability. Now, ever since I updated my system with "aptitude upgrade" it won't work and this is causing a SERIOUS problem. I've never liked posts that say, "NEED HELP", or "URGENT" in the subject, but I do need help figuring this out quickly. This is one of those small business situations where everything I'm working on has to stop until this is fixed. If at all possible, I need to find a way to fix it by tomorrow at 6 am.
I've included the modem and serial port information first, then included the background about the problems I've had since upgrading Sarge (which really messed up my system). I've been verbose because I want to make sure all the details that could help are included. Any help is appreciated! In this case I have a US Robotics external serial modem attached to the system. I have a number of programs that use this throughout the day. Since the primary system I communicate with can take up to 8 hours to connect to (it's that busy!), all my software checks to see if it is connected, then does it's job. If it isn't connected, then it dials the system until it connects. There has never been a problem before with a program exiting and leaving the modem online for the next program to use. Now whenever a program ends, or if I kill a program (so it doesn't have time to exit), I can tell by watching the modem that it hangs up immediately (the carrier detect led goes off instantly, along with the clear-to-send light). I'd think this was a Perl problem, since my programs are in Perl, but it can't be a reset routine, since I lose the connection even if I kill the program, without it being able to go through closing down. I do not have a detailed knowledge of serial interfaces, but my best guess is that a setting was changed on the serial port or there is something different in the newer kernel in device drivers. Any help in figuring out what I need to check in serial port settings or device drivers would be extremely helpful. (The modem does not use a special driver.) And, under additional information, here's the whole history, including and since it was working perfectly: I did "aptitude update && aptitude upgrade". Here is the log of the upgrade: [UPGRADE] cupsys 1.1.23-10 -> 1.1.23-10sarge1 [UPGRADE] cupsys-bsd 1.1.23-10 -> 1.1.23-10sarge1 [UPGRADE] cupsys-client 1.1.23-10 -> 1.1.23-10sarge1 [UPGRADE] gnupg 1.4.1-1 -> 1.4.1-1sarge1 [UPGRADE] gzip 1.3.5-10 -> 1.3.5-10sarge1 [UPGRADE] kernel-image-2.6.8-2-386 2.6.8-16 -> 2.6.8-16sarge1 [UPGRADE] kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686 2.6.8-16 -> 2.6.8-16sarge1 [UPGRADE] libcupsimage2 1.1.23-10 -> 1.1.23-10sarge1 [UPGRADE] libcupsys2-gnutls10 1.1.23-10 -> 1.1.23-10sarge1 [UPGRADE] mdadm 1.9.0-4 -> 1.9.0-4sarge1 [UPGRADE] perl 5.8.4-8 -> 5.8.4-8sarge3 [UPGRADE] perl-base 5.8.4-8 -> 5.8.4-8sarge3 [UPGRADE] perl-doc 5.8.4-8 -> 5.8.4-8sarge3 [UPGRADE] perl-modules 5.8.4-8 -> 5.8.4-8sarge3 [UPGRADE] samba 3.0.14a-3 -> 3.0.14a-3sarge1 [UPGRADE] samba-common 3.0.14a-3 -> 3.0.14a-3sarge1 [UPGRADE] smbclient 3.0.14a-3 -> 3.0.14a-3sarge1 [UPGRADE] sudo 1.6.8p7-1.2 -> 1.6.8p7-1.3 [UPGRADE] xpdf-common 3.00-13 -> 3.00-13.5 [UPGRADE] xpdf-utils 3.00-13 -> 3.00-13.5 While it was upgrading, it warned me that I would have to reboot, since some kernel modules were updated in the same kernel version that I was using. So when it finished all the updating, I rebooted. It would not boot. I spent the entire day on Sunday trying to figure this out. I have an Adaptec ASH-1233 IDE controller card for some of the drives in my RAID and it creates problems with the drive order. It seems when the kernel was updated, apt or dpkg ran update-grub (without telling me -- you always get a choice of whether or not to update config files with apt, but it just overwrites /boot/grub/menu.lst without even telling you it is doing it!). My special settings were erased. It took me most of Sunday to track down the problem. While doing that, I had tried different boot configurations, and with the Adaptec card, it made it hard to tell which drive it would try to boot. When I finally got it back online, the RAID was trashed (I had NOT written to ANY drives or in ANY directory other than /boot/grub). All my data and program files were on the RAID. Fortunately, I had a backup from only a few hours before the meltdown (thanks to rsync). So I used rsync to restore the RAID drive and all my programs, data, and settings. I carefully checked and made sure all the settings were intact. The boot drive, other than menu.lst, seemed intact. The next day, the modem dialed up to the system okay, but did not do any processing, since it was a holiday and the data was not available. Today, the modem can dial and function, EXCEPT whenever the program using it ends or is killed, the modem drops its connection. I have no idea why, so any help is appreciated. What could be changed that could force the modem to hang up whenever the controlling program is killed? Thanks for any help! Hal -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
