building the driver

Recent kernel releases already contain the Gigaset drivers. (For support in older kernel releases, see the old kernels page.) All major distributions ship a kernel with the Gigaset drivers compiled as modules, so you can use the device right away, at least with the front-end tools and with the ISDN subsystem chosen by your distribution.

Regrettably, some distributions still don't enable CAPI 2.0 support for the Gigaset drivers as recommended. Affected distributions include openSUSE 11.4 and Ubuntu 11.04. If you use one of those, you may want to rebuild the drivers in order to take full advantage of their capabilities.

If you compile a kernel yourself, you can select the Gigaset drivers you want built, and whether you want them built as modules or linked directly into the kernel, in the drivers' kernel configuration section: 

Device Drivers
    ---> ISDN Support
        ---> Siemens Gigaset support

There you can also change the configuration options:

Note that the GIGASET_CAPI option is only displayed if both the CAPI 2.0 subsystem and the old ISDN4Linux subsystem are enabled. Otherwise there is no choice, and the driver is automatically compiled for the available subsystem, if any.

Also note that you can build the Gigaset driver even if you enable neither of these subsystems. The driver will then only support access through the character device described in the README.gigaset file. This allows you to use the front-end tools.

Finally note that if you build your ISDN subsystem as a module, you should build the Gigaset driver as a module, too. Otherwise the driver will not be able to interact with the subsystem, and will consequently be built for character device access only.

configuring the driver

The driver itself needs no configuration. For the USB connected devices, the driver is loaded and attached automatically by the Linux hotplug mechanism, announces its availability to the selected ISDN subsystem, and is ready for use. For the M101, as serial lines do not have a hotplug mechanism, the driver must be loaded and attached explicitly by way of the ldattach command, for example: 

ldattach M101 /dev/ttyS0
If you want this to happen automatically when you start your system, add the command to some system startup script like /etc/rc.local or /etc/init.d/gigaset. The rest is automatic just like for the other devices.

With the CAPI 2.0 subsystem, two modules must also be loaded explicitly if needed: the module capi.ko that supports userspace CAPI 2.0 applications, and the module capidrv.ko for supporting legacy ISDN4Linux applications. Most distributions include the capiinit utility for that purpose, but a simple modprobe will work just as well.

Some distributions also include tools to configure some standard ISDN applications like dial-up Internet access, fax or answering machine. The details depend of course largely on the distribution. For example, the YaST tool of (open)SuSE has its own database of known ISDN cards and is unable to set up an ISDN device that isn't listed there.

what next

If you want to use your Gigaset device as an ISDN adapter, go ahead and set up your ISDN application now.

If you would like to access other features of your Gigaset base, have a look at the front-end tools page.

More details on using the driver, including hints for troubleshooting, can be found in the README.gigaset file in the Documentation/isdn directory of the kernel source tree.