[plug] serial loopback?

[Sol]

I'm on the verge of completely turning a friend away from the Dark Side, 
but have one rather recalcitrant problem - can't get the internet 
connection working. The modem is detected by Suse 8.2 and I can even get 
it to dial and connect, but then it drops out immediately. Kppp tells us 
that we've got pppd error 17: The PPP negotiation failed because serial 
loopback was detected.

I found this on the pppd manpage. But this is where I got stuck in my 
search for a solution, because I've no idea how to switch serial 
loopback off.  It's also quite odd given that we've got a Roadstar USB 
modem.

I had a similar problem when I set things up to use Kinternet. 
/var/log/messages said:

Aug 23 17:21:52 linux pppd[2814]: Plugin passwordfd.so loaded.
Aug 23 17:21:52 linux pppd[2814]: pppd 2.4.1 started by root, uid 0
Aug 23 17:22:41 linux pppd[2814]: Serial connection established.
Aug 23 17:22:46 linux pppd[2814]: Using interface ppp0
Aug 23 17:22:46 linux pppd[2814]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/modem
Aug 23 17:22:47 linux pppd[2814]: Serial line is looped back.
Aug 23 17:22:47 linux pppd[2814]: Connection terminated.
Aug 23 17:22:48 linux pppd[2814]: Exit.

The "Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/modem" bit seems odd to me. (/dev/modem is 
symlinked to /dev/ttyACM0 and the modem does dial and connect, but drops 
out straight away.)


Any ideas appreciated....

TIA; sol

-- 
==============================
Sol Hanna
solATautonomonDOTnet