Hi all first of all thanks to all who posted replies on this. Thought I'd post a brief overview of my current situ :
1)wvdial/ppp now works well, except for one small problem - my modem driver displays an error when it is loaded to say that it is built for kernel 2.2.18 while I am running 2.2.19pre3. This would be an obvious problem were it not that I compiled it myself the night before last using the kernel-headers package I have installed (perhaps I have mis-installed??? - must check!!!). Anyways, apart from that there are no probs. Getting this to work involved using the dialout group with a little messing with privs to ensure only dialout users and root may access the modem, ppp and wvidial and associated scripts/configfiles. I'm just going to audit this setup a bit - if anyone would like a listing of what I did I'll be glad to send it.
2)Still can't get X to work for anyone other than root, despite hours of info reading (X is very well documented but still not very easy to follow. I now know that there are a number of files that need setting up in the users directory, but its a bit of a scary one. I'll post something when I have a resolution. Meanwhile, if anyone is willing to send me their ~/.X* files of a bog-standard user to use/study as a base I would greatly appreciate it, I'm running XFree86-3.x.(I would rather not use the root ones that I have in case I inadvertantly create an X session ready to yield root privs to any tom/dick/harry who knows how).
3)I now have a full kernel build environment setup. Not realising the existence of make-kpkg I was off on good old make. Have to say that make-kpkg is the biz. - whaddya mean RTFM !!? I *know* how to build a kernel...!!!!..... int BuryHead(TSand _sand, THead _head){ return (_sand += _head); } ;o)
4)I had been having some probs with apt-get / dselect and found that having the update cdrom (Linux Expo 2001) referenced in /etc/apt/sources.list was causing dselect to 'suggest' upgrading all sorts. dselect specifies a keystroke shift-D which never seemed to fix it - any time I went to install there would always be a long list of packages to remove, even though I hadn't specified them. Commenting out the lines referring to the update cdrom then doing apt-get update did fix things however. Now if I want something off the update cdrom I uncomment the relevant line in sources.list, apt-get update, then apt-get install <package> and all is well. The only caveat is that when I run dselect with the lines commented out anything that I have installed from the update cdrom is listed in the obsolete section.... The point is I suppose that when installing the base debian system from the installer its best to keep the update cdrom out of the way until you are happy with the base, then let dpkg see the update cdrom if you want to. The only weak points with dpkg and dselect though is finding a package that supplies a file (a la : rpm -qa --provides <file>). I'm sure that if it can do this its in the docs but I haven't found it yet.
Observations on a week in debian land : 1)Debian is not for the beginner nor the faint hearted. 2)Debian does not pretend to be for the beginner or the faint hearted. 3)Debian likes to scare the faint hearted and make beginners suffer. 4)I Have been suffering a little but I am not scared just yet. 5)My back aches, my neck aches, my eyes are tired, I need sleep. 6)Debian Rocks - anything that can keep me away from the TV/Guitar/Pub for 4 Nights in a row - despite annoying the hell out of me and keeping me awake until some ungodly hours drinking coffee and eating dodgy biscuits has got to be good.
Cheers all, sorry 'bout the essay. Earl