Update on Sep. 28, 2008: I will no longer update this script since Drush does this and much more.

Anyone who has used Drupal for some time knows how boring it is having to constantly update modules...

In my new house, my ISP (Cabovisão) installed a new cable modem, a Scientific Atlanta Webstar 2203c.

It's a stupid modem. Really stupid. If I unplug the ethernet cable (or the USB cable, which I don't use) and plug it into another computer, the modem has to be reset so it can adapt to the new hardware - these were the words from the tech support guy, not mine.

Anyway, I thought that it might have something for me to play with and so I tried to find out how to access the modem.

It is accessible via SNMP and also has a web interface, which doesn't allow for anything else other than getting some (a lot, actually) information and performing some line tests - at least as far as Ive discovered.

The web interface can be accessed via http://192.168.100.1 but most pages are locked and the user is presented with the unfriendly message "This feature has not been enabled in your cable modem". Unacceptable, of course :)
A quick Google search for "webstar "feature is not enabled" revealed a post in cable-modem.net that contains the answer.

We can set the access level for that page via this web page:
http://192.168.100.1/_aslvl.asp

The login information is the following:
Username: admin
Password: W2402

We can set the AccessLevel to 2, enter the username and password again, as instructed on that forum post, and there it is, access to all pages, except the "Advanced" tab. To access the "Advanced" tab and all the information hidden beneath it, set the AccessLevel to 3 instead of 2 and there you go.

One interesting thing is that this is not a "normal" cable modem. This is an EMTA, which is basically a cable modem and a VoIP terminal in a single box. I also noticed references to host names containing "voip" in their names, all over the place under the "Advanced" section of the web interface. Maybe this varies depending on the ISP the modem is being used on but I find it interesting that my ISP may be using VoIP for their clients. I didn't know they were going that way. Let's see how it goes!

UPDATE:
As requested by kukubau, here are some screenshots of the password-protected pages.

Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" was released a couple of days ago and I immediately installed it on my laptop, which is kind of my test lab for operating systems.

It looks good so far. Very smooth.

I only had one problem: the screen was completely black during boot and shutdown. I could only see a blank screen during startup or shutdown, and although I could still switch to the other consoles along with the fact that the boot splash screen isn't properly informative, the boot process was taking over 3 minutes. Unacceptable.

I searched Google and after tweaking the keywords once, I reached the golden combination: "gutsy gibbon blank screen during boot"

Turns out this is an already known bug in Gutsy and I quickly found out how to solve it, thanks to the folks at Launchpad:

1) Change the resolution in /etc/usplash.conf to 1280x800
2) Run "sudo update-initramfs -u -k `uname -r`"

Note that the 1280x800 resolution is the "default" resolution for my laptop's monitor - I have an Acer TravelMate 4001 WLMi, with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700. The resolution for your laptop's monitor may be different.

You may want to take a look at Xorg.conf or go to System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution to see what you should use in /etc/usplash.conf (assuming the installer correctly detected the supported resolutions, of course).