Using the PPP and (to a lesser extent) ISP Hookup HOWTO's I've been able to
get pppd-based dial on demand working. Sort of. My goal is to set up the
Linux gateway to allow family members on my SOHO LAN to transparently
initiate PPP connections to the Internet using a 56K dial-up account with
my ISP (without their needing to know any Linux)--and having those
connections die transparently and automatically when the user is done. I'm
running RH 6.1 on the Linux gateway and, if it matters, the Linux machine
is set up to masquerade the LAN exactly as outlined in the IP Masq HOWTO
including running a caching DNS server. Briefly, everything works when I'm
sitting at console (I can surf when I dial-up the ISP using kppp, my LAN
can surf when I manually make a connection, DNS resolves, etc.) and my task
now is to make it work transparently while I'm away.
It seems that Red Hat intends to manage PPP differently than outlined in
the PPP howto (e.g., the ppp-on/-off are not installed) so I'm a little
confused as to whether I'm doing things correctly? Here's what I've done:
I added a few options in /etc/ppp/options ('lock', 'idle 300', 'demand')
and then I do '/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup ppp0' as root. When I
try to hit the outside world (from a client on the LAN), it dials.
OK, here are the issues:
In order to make this available for anyone on the LAN all the time, where
do I put the '/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup ppp0' command? rc.local?
And right now, I'm making 'demand' a global PPP option; is there a better
place to put the options, and if so how do I 'up' the link using those
options?
Also, using my setup things worked well for several short periods of
surfing but once something went terribly wrong and I'm having difficulty
trouble-shooting it: No packets were getting routed outside. I don't know
what tools I could have used to verify that the ppp link was up... But
there seemed to be two instances of ppp-watch running. I repeatedly tried
to killed them (using both kill and ifdown) and restart but it wouldn't go.
pppd kept complaining in messages that it couldn't find my secrets (why
not?). I rebooted and it didn't work at first but after 15 minutes it just
worked. Very strange.
And I expected pppd to hang up after 5 minutes but I waited about 15
minutes and the connection did not idle. I guess it's possible that some
process was silently slipping packets to the outside world; how could I
most easily see traffic to/from one interface? Whenever I've tried to use
something to sniff eth0 I've been bewildered by the output... Or am I
mistaken about the 'idle' option? Maybe there's something else I need to do?
Finally, is this the best way? The pppd-based approach seemed elegant to
me but maybe I would get more reliability from something like daild?
Thanks!
-Alan
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Alan D. Mead / Research Scientist / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Institute for Personality and Ability Testing
1801 Woodfield Dr / Savoy IL 61874 USA
217-352-4739 (v) / 217-352-9674 (f)
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