I have enjoyed linux. Second time in my long lifetime I ventured into it and I figured I got it right this time. I found knoppix and then kanotix. I had it all. I really really enjoyed myself (after a little lm sensors hump . Have been running a few months' old version of Kanotix - BH4. Upgraded everything but the kernel. Then I got itchy. Yeah, same old same old. Figured I would try the newest and greatest BH. 7a. I decided to put it on the spare partition of my linux disk.

Mistake.

I knew it before I did it. I knew grub was going to take over for my much loved (and now known) lilo. I was confident I could handle it. Oh well. That's bad, no more BH4. I cannot access it! The floppies I made for BH4 won't boot it and grub won't touch it with a ten foot pole (yes have added it to menu.lst's until I will scream). My data was backed up. I figured this might happend.

But. What I didn't count on was BH7a being unusable to me. I am a dialerupper. It looks like this revision has gone the way of one of the other live cd distros I tried. I think it was morphix. In live cd I couldn't dialup. Only damn networker options. I hd installed it and found out, gee whiz, only root can use the modem. - users just go suck an egg. I wrote the developers forum, never got a response though I did find something from an inner circler in another forum that dialup is passe' and users are no longer supported in that archane endeavor. But I merrily went on using kanotix and sometimes knoppix....they let user use the modem.

...yes, user is in the dialout group. User is in dip group. User is in just about every dang group but root. But no modem for user, no dialing up, no internet. aaaaaaargh yes, I googled till the cows came home for the last 24 hours on the problem and the only thing I ever come up with is somebody with a snotty rotten response to the dialerupper that the user has to be in the above-mentioned groups. The poster generally says they are and is never heard from again. Probably like me. There was one suggestion in here I googled of In -f/ttys0/dev/modem. No command found. That poster's prob was solved when they hd installed. No such luck for me.

For goodness sake, I cannot be the only person on a dialup in this whole wide world that is using that distro/revision. But I am not coming up with anything. Brick wall.

My windows install here is a neglected mess. It needs tender loving care. No time like the present I guess? My only other option is to reinstall BH4 from scratch. Too painful, I had upgraded everything but the kernel and you try that on a dialup. Not going through it again.