Okay, Ive been asked by a lot of friends and classmates, to help me configure their modem with Linux. So here goes. This is a guide for Starcom UT300R2U.

• Goto your browser and in the address bar, type in “192.168.1.1″ (without the quotes).

• In the login window that appears, type in “admin” (without the quotes) for the username and password. That’s right, both are the same.
  

  uid:admin; pwd:admin

• Now you will encounter a window, with various links in a pane on the left side, and a table giving some device information. Click Advanced Setup in the left pane and you will come across such a table.

• Click the Edit button on the first entry. According to your current configuration, the displayed table may differ by a few entries, but its inconsequential, because we are editing and making a new one.

• ATM PVC Configuration:  Enter the following: 0 in the VPI textbox and 35 in the VCI textbox. Disable the”Enable VLAN Tagging” checkbox. Service Category must be UBR without PCR.
  

  ATM/PVC config.

• Select the PPPoE radio button. Make sure encapsulation mode is as shown. Click Next.

• This step is pretty important. Make sure you enter the correct username and password provided by your ISP(in this case BSNL). Make sure you have ticked Dial on Demand. It means that your  modem (which is halfway into being a router) will dial out automatically when you switch it on.
  

The only shortcoming you may face, is not having a static IP on your LAN. Here is what you should do, assuming that the modem isn’t shared.  Goto Advanced Setup – LAN, and make the following changes.

Remember, if anything goes wrong, no need to pray to God, or send me swear messages, just press the holy RESET button at the back of the Modem !

openSuse is a godsend! All hail openSuse!! I was always bombarded with a question that all would-be linux enthusiasts always ask:”To install Linux, do i boot in M$Windows and pop in the CD?” They did not know about the F9 or even the BIOS key! Upto now my answer would have been a big disappointing NO! I used to start with the BIOS and then go on to explain about partitioning. Not any longer. You just pop in the CD while working in windows, do your stuff, reboot, and Voila! you boot straight into the Suse install. No partioning needed (for newbies), just like windows, but better looking plus you get to install what you want from the huge database in the DVD!

What they’ve basically done is make an initrd on the primary partition.

The initial ramdisk, or initrd is a temporary file system used by the Linux kernel during boot and is basically used for making preparations before the real root file system can be mounted. In the initrd system, files to be accessed by the kernel at boot-time are stored on a ramdisk, whose contents are found in a filesystem which has been made on a loop mounted file. The location of this initial ramdisk (initrd) is provided to kernel by a boot loader.Click Here for more on initrd.

It had all the newbies in my coll clamouring up for more. In essence, the guys at openSuse have sounded the death knell for Install Fests. Takes just under an hour for an uncustomised install.Will take an hour for customising partitions and packages.