I'm a Linux noob with a series of (admittedly) stupid questions.  My Google
skills have failed me, and I think I just need a bit of patient handholding...

My goal is to use an old internal modem to record incoming voice calls over a
phone line.  I've found a few sites that give directions, such as:

http://frank.harvard.edu/~coldwell/answering_machine/

I've also spent some time poking around sites such as
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/, but I'm running into what I suspect are problems
stemming from my vast lack of understanding:


(#1) Every set of instructions I've come across talk about adding lines to the
/etc/inittab.  Lines such as:

S0:345:respawn:/sbin/vgetty ttyS0

Ubuntu (8.04) doesn't appear to HAVE inittab anymore -- from what I gather, it's
been replaced by Upstart.  How does one 'translate' the above line of code into
something I could add to Upstart?  I gather actually adding it consists of
putting a file in the /etc/init.d directory?

I think the general point is to tell Ubuntu to run 'vgetty' (which, apparently,
is really mgetty-voice?) and pay attention to ttyS0.

(#2) How do I know my internal modem is at ttyS0 (or elsewhere)?  Is there a way
to 'ping' through my ports until I find the right location?

(#3) (Apologies for this) My vague understanding is that inittab/Upstart is the
rough equivalent of autoexec.bat from DOS, only... more low-level?  You can
start/stop/monitor hardware as well as software.  Am I even in the ballpark
with that vague understanding?

(#4) I'm rather confused as to 'getty' vs. 'mgetty' vs. 'vgetty'.  After staring
at the man pages, I'm inclined to believe mgetty is an improved getty, and
vgetty adds voice support.  I guess vgetty is really mgetty-voice, even though
everybody still refers to 'vgetty' as if it were separate.  Anyone care to
smooth out my (mis)understanding?

(#5) So, if vgetty is a better mgetty, and mgetty is a super getty, then why, do
I have something like six virtual getty consoles (Ctr+Alt+F1...F6) by default?
Why do I WANT 6 virtual consoles?

Any advice from the Linux gurus would be greatly appreciated.  I can't imagine
this is really all that complicated a project for someone who knows their way
around Linux.  It looks like many people have done it... all with earlier
distros than what I've got, apparently.

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