There have been some changes to the Internet Direct service since they have been bought out by Look Communications. Phone numbers have changed, and so has the PPP service. It appears that it is all in an effort to get customers on their satellite service. Since they do not offer tech support to Linux users (they never have in the past, but at least Charles Pham had his web page, which was helpful), they are pretty much left in the dark as to whether satellite service is really ready for Linux. Apart from that, if you are like me, you are a kind of luddite to whom speed is not really a concern.
In one of my web contracts, it became necessary to configure PPP at my home in order to do my work. I found that once again I had to go up the proverbial learning curve with PAP authentication, something I never bothered myself with before (maybe I should have), and new chat scripts and so on. In addition, I have this strange machine that was pre-configured for me, so diddling with network protocols on a machine that is otherwise functioning fine was not my idea of fun, since it was paramount that nothing be broken on it. But there was work to do, and it wasn't going to be done if PPP wasn't up and running. So...
While pppd has always been kernel version-dependent, there have also been changes in the way ISPs handle logins. PAP authentication (less common is CHAP), or "Password Authentication Protocol" is a secure means by which a password is sent over to your ISP, since your password is kept in a "secrets" file that is only readable and writeable by root. Internet Direct still allows for a text based login, depending on how your pppd command was entered.
/etc/resolv.conf
resolv.conf was changed to:
domain idirect.comNote what was done to commenting out the nameservers from where I worked. "hoober.com" is a fictitious name, but you get the point. All nameservers at my home (since I am not sure how you could have much of a name server over a ppp line on a local machine) point to idirect.com, including the "domain" statement and the "search" statement. Since I run four network devices on my local machine (vmware/vmnet, ppp0, eth0, and loopback) I was a little nervous as to how this would pan out. But it was fine, and right now I am editing this web page from my vmnet connection (Windows NT4 in a sandbox over Linux) with PPP up and full net access. Hell, even my database still works.
search idirect.com
#HOOBER
# search hoober.com
nameserver 207.136.65.24
nameserver 199.166.254.254
nameserver 199.166.254.9
#HOOBER
# nameserver 204.121.251.1
*.info;mail.none;news.none;authpriv.none;daemon.debug;local2.debug /var/log/messagesNote that this is all supposed to be on the same line of text. The text is divided here into two lines for readability. The change I made to that line in syslog.conf was to add "daemon.debug;local2.debug". The effect of this statement was to redirect all ppp debugging messages to /var/log/messages. As I have said elsewhere on these pages, it is important to keep track of debugging information while testing your ppp connection. Linux has a command called tail that can track messages sent to a log file in real time. A log file is a plain text file where messages are sent which bears a transcript of all messages from a process like pppd. Now, readers of earlier versions of my document may recall (it is still up on one of my webpages) the statement
Since I am a frequent user
and a fan of FVWM2, I have a Button Bar (FvwmButtons) with the system log
(/var/log/messages)
constantly running, no matter what I am doing. So it is convenient for
me to simply chuck all the ppp stuff in the same file so I can monitor
it in real time. If you are also running fvwm2, the command that "swallows"
an xterm (or an rxvt terminal in this case) would be something like:
*FvwmButtons(8x1, Title "System Messages", Swallow(UseOld) "messages" \ 'Exec rxvt -T messages -n messages -fn fixed -e tail -f /var/log/messages &')... in the section where there would be information on FvwmButtons. This statement would be found either in you home .fvwm2rc file or on the system.fvwm2rc file. Besides this there are other window managers that have button bars that can swallow applications.
And if you don't know what any of this is about, then not to worry. Just go to an xterm window and issue this command, and you can also have a constant monitor:
There are some software engineers out there that swear by (and sometimes at) keeping good notes. On the one hand you would like to keep notes detailed enough so that when you screw up, you can backtrack. On the other hand, detailed notes are also a good thing to have if something goes right, and you would like to reproduce the same situation another time on another computer. All computers are different, and you never know what it is you did that makes something work and something else not work. However, your effectiveness as a configurator is only going to be as good as the quality of your notes.
#! /bin/bash # A *real* makeshilft ppp-on script -- but it works! # This script *requires* PAP authentication from the ISP. # This script does not make use of /etc/ppp/ppp-on-dialer. # # By Paul King # DEBUG='debug' DEBUG='' USERPPP=pking # Get rid of the ethernet gateway (it is reset in ppp-off) /sbin/route del default 2>> /dev/null # set up the ppp connection /usr/sbin/pppd connect \ '/usr/sbin/chat TIMEOUT 45 "" ATDT4166400481 CONNECT "\c"' \ /dev/ttyS1 115200 $DEBUG user $USERPPP &
route add default gw 192.168.1.1 eth0
#!/bin/sh ###################################################################### # # Determine the device to be terminated. # if [ "$1" = "" ]; then DEVICE=ppp0 else DEVICE=$1 fi ###################################################################### # # If the ppp0 pid file is present then the program is running. Stop it. if [ -r /var/run/$DEVICE.pid ]; then kill -INT `cat /var/run/$DEVICE.pid` # # If the kill did not work then there is no process running for this # pid. It may also mean that the lock file will be left. You may wish # to delete the lock file at the same time. if [ ! "$?" = "0" ]; then rm -f /var/run/$DEVICE.pid echo "ERROR: Removed stale pid file" exit 1 fi # # Success. Let pppd clean up its own junk. echo "PPP link to $DEVICE terminated." route add default gw 192.168.1.1 eth0 exit 0 fi # # The ppp process is not running for ppp0 echo "ERROR: PPP link is not active on $DEVICE" exit 1
As I had said, ppp-on relies on a file called "pap-secrets", located under /etc/ppp. This is a "secrets" file which contains information about usernames and passwords, as well as the server names of the machines they can log into. The 4-column format goes something like:
| clientusername | servername | secret | IP_address |
|---|---|---|---|
| iampedantic | snoopy | pork_rules | 172.16.195.8 |
| idontcare | * | kalium19 | * |
clientusername is the username on the ISP's account.
servername is the name of the ISP's server.
secret is the password you give to your ISP to log on to it.
IP_address is the IP address that you'll be assigned by the remote system. You are likely not to know what this is ahead of time.
The second row of the above table assigns the server "snoopy" to the username "iampedantic". When iampedantic logs in, he does so with the password "pork_rules", and expects his machine to be assigned the IP number 172.16.195.8, thereby identifying it to the internet.
The third row of the table allows the ISP to assign any server to user idontcare, who logs in with username kalium19. idontcare then waits for any IP address to be assigned to him. This will lead to the same outcome, his ability to be seen in the internet.
The entire content of pap-secrets consists of lines as written above. If you only have one ISP account, then it is likely your file will only consist of a single entry.
lock crtscts noauth defaultroute asyncmap 0xa0000
So here, we not only want the modem locked, but we want to assume no authentication (having already pre-determined the authentication method already in our setups and scripts), and also wanting pppd to set up its own default route without my having to type it in each time I log on.
since Apr 1 2007