PPP / ADSL / demand / GUI prompt question
Hello all,
new Debian user here, hope somebody can help.
With no help, and asking no questions until now - but extensive use of Google! - I have managed to partition my PC's hard drive, download the 5.0.3 net-inst ISO image, install Debian on my new partition, find the firmware for my ADSL modem so that I could get pon and poff working, then use 'aptitude' to download just about everything else I wanted, or thought I wanted: nvidia drivers, xorg, kfce, slim, iceweasel, adobe-flashplugin, ntfs-3g, alsa-utils, and sharp Microsoft fonts.
All of the above is working, including pon and poff, but I have a question as follows. (I am surprised I haven't been able to find the answer to this using Google / the Debian website / aptitude etc., so if I am missing something obvious please go easy on me!)
At the moment I have to start an xterm and explicitly type 'pon' before I can use any internet-based programs such as iceweasel or even ping. My question is, is there any way I can get iceweasel (or ping) to cause a GUI dialog to appear, asking me if I want to establish the ADSL connection, if it is not up? (In other words, the way it works in Windows?) Said GUI dialog would preferably work on top of kfce, which I like.
I HAVE tried adding the line 'demand' to my /etc/ppp/peers/provider file. After doing that if I run pon and then plog -f, I can see messages up to the point where it tells me the local and remote IP addresses, with nothing after that - presumably because pppd is waiting for some 'demand' before it connects. However, when I then try iceweasel, it still says 'site not found' and and nothing more appears in the plog -f output. Similarly, when I try ping, it still says unknown host.
Just a reminder, even if this were working, this would still not be 100% of what I am after - I would like to know if there is a way that I can be prompted if anything wants to connect to the internet - preferably via a GUI dialog that works on top of kfce. However I would still be interested to know why the 'demand' line in my PPP provider file does not seem to have the desired effect.
Thank you in advance.
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