LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 19:56:32 +0930

permanent modem configuration in SuSE linux???

Is there any facility in SuSE linux to configure
"pppd" to run on start-up, and stay up, etc.?

That's what I want to do to port my permanent-modem
gateway set-up from RedHat 5.2 to SuSE 7.1.
However, I can't find anything to make "pppd"
start on boot and stay up forever in SuSE's "yast".

Nor can I find any trace of a capability to 
implement permanent modem functionality in the
/etc/rc.d scripts. There's stuff there to do
ISDN, but the ppp stuff is just absent.
The directory /etc/ppp has some rudimentary stuff.

The usual tool under SuSE to do ppp is "wvdial".
But that seems to be only an on-demand tool.
I can't see how to configure wvdial to start up on boot.

----------------------------------------------
Question:
Has anyone set up a permanent modem link (like 24 hours
a day every day etc.) with SuSE 6.2, 6.4 or 7.1?
If so, could you tell if there is some facility there
waiting to be configured?
Or do I have to duplicate the entire RH 5.2 set-up,
script for script on the SuSE system?

By the way, this web page:
http://www.topology.org/linux/pppd.html
shows how I think the ppp set-up works on my old
RH 5.2 machine. It's _very_ convoluted.

Some day, some good person should write a single program
or script which does what all of the scripts do,
but with a single config file.

----------------------------------------------
Ah.  While researching this e-mail, I did find
a script /etc/rc.d/wvdial.dod in my SuSE 7.1
machine. 
But this does "dial on demand".
(And I don't understand how it works.)
This starts to explain the motivation in the absence
of permanent modem support.

In Germany (and most of Europe) they pay for the phone
on a timed basis.
So typically, no one even wants to have a 24 hour a day
modem going.
And finally in the latest SuSE, they've added the ability to
set up pppd to dial when a packet needs to be sent!!!

This is an area in which RH seems to be well ahead of SuSE.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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