Re: Why is PPP so screwed up!?!?!
On Wed, 26 Feb 1997, CoB SysAdmin@mail.midusa.net (Joe Emenaker) wrote:
> EVERY person I've talked to who has tried getting dial-up ppp going on
> Debian has approached it like a heavyweight fighter preparing for a title
> fight. They spend a few days just mentally preparing for the ordeal. Then,
Funny, I have found Debian's PPP easier to set up than any other Linux. I
have had no troubles of this kind. In fact, the only problems I've ever
had have been traced to my ISP.
> I editted /etc/ppp.chatscript to properly log into the dial-in server.
> Since /etc/ppp.options_out made reference to /dev/modem, I went to /dev and
> make a symlink from "modem" to "ttyS0". (I know I could have edited the
Bad idea. Replace the entry in the options file with ttyS0, do NOT make a
modem symlink. This could, in fact, be responsible for all the rest of
your problems.
Reason is: modems use UUCP-style locking. Other programs will see that
/dev/modem is locked, but NOT that /dev/ttyS0 is locked, and will use that
device without asking any questions at all!
> The system started up... started pppd and the modem began dialing. I watched
> the whole show by periodically doing "tail /var/log/messages". Chatscript
It's possible you missed something then... Try using tail -f
/var/log/messages.
> of the connection, apparently). So, I tried pinging <remoteIP> and not a
> single packet came back (although I could see them getting sent out on the
> modem by watching the lights). Pinging <localIP> went fine, but didn't use
> the modem. Pinging anywhere on the server's network other than <localIP>.
This is perhaps indicitive of a problem with your ISP. It is strange that
it goes out but does not return.
> Which *seems* okay. I was a little concerned about not seeing a "default"
> in there, but "route add default <remoteIP> metric 1", but that didn't
> cause anything new to show up in "route -n". Lastly, after a couple minutes,
> the connection will drop, with /var/log/messages reporting:
Oops, seems that you forgot to put "defaultroute" keyword in your PPP
configuration! Although, since you specified -n, route WON'T show a
"default" route!! So it could be (and perhaps is likely) that the 0.0.0.0
entry is indeed your default.
> Also, I tried dialing into a Cisco terminal server and all I got was "Could
> not determine local IP address". Again, I don't have this problem with Win95.
Just because it works with Windows 95 does *not* mean that it works
correctly. My ISP has a Cisco term server and it works with Windows 95
but doesn't negotiate the remote IP address with *ANY* other OS -- OS/2,
Linux, FreeBSD, even some other Windows socket implementations.
It appears that Win95 is a lot more forgiving than standards would
indicate that it should be.
> So, I have a few questions:
> 1 - Why is PPP this screwed up? Even if the "ppp_on_boot" thing *did* work,
It isn't.
> why is there no mention of it in the instal program? There are a lot of
> people out there who install Debian on their home systems and need to
> use ppp in order to add/update packages via ftp. Shouldn't a little more
> effort be made to make this a little simpler? I don't know of ANYONE
> who looks forward to attempting ppp on Linux without a sense of dread.
It was easy for me. Easy for others I know. I don't know why you are
making it so hard on yourself :-)
If you want a better solution, why not use diald? It will automatically
bring up the modem when there is a connection attempt, will handle
disconnects due to idle, etc.
> 2 - How can I fix it in the short term? Does anyone know what I can do to
> be able to see the remote network?
Well, without seeing your exact configs, it's hard to say. If you'd like
to mail me (privately, not to the list) your ppp configs and relevant
portions of /var/log/messages, I'll take a look and see if I can spot
anything.
BTW, isn't the appropriate file to edit /etc/ppp.options_out?
> 3 - I think I'm resigned to the fact that this figgin' ppp catastrophe isn't
> going to get fixed unless I do it myself. I'm tenatively planning on
> writing a set of scripts and ppp.options files to allow people to
> easily configure their system as a dial-in server or as a home machine
> that dials into an ISP. Does anyone want to offer suggestions, help
> code, or help test?
This is what the existing system accomplishes, no?
---
John Goerzen | Running Debian GNU/Linux (www.debian.org)
Custom Programming |
jgoerzen@complete.org |
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