Is diald usable?
Hello,
After many troubles and trials diald is finally running on my gateway
in a small network of four computers (all running Linux :-) ) All
computers can connect to internet via the gateway and an external ISDN
modem.
- All works fine, except that bringing down the link takes a VERY long
time, too long for my wallet. If you log what is happening using the
FIFO you see that most packet transfers take a very short time and
then the link is still up waiting for the timers to count down to zero
and releasing the connection. Trying to reduce the timeout numbers
does not improve the situation, the connection frequency increases
instead.
- Another issue is that the gateway machine should not be touched by
other users (i.e. the rest of the family). This means that the FIFO
is not accessible via dctl (no root users).
- The intended function is as follows: When other users (eg. the kids
in the afternoons) want to connect to the internet, they power up
the gateway machine (if not on), diald starts on that one, they
power up the external modem and the HUB (100MB ethernet), start the
user machine and off they go. Everything is OK so far.
- Now comes the problems: When the user has finished he/she should log
out and shut down the user computer. (Shutting down as an ordinary
user is another issue, not fully solved in my opinion :-( ). He/she
should also power off the HUB and the modem (not the gateway)! Diald
does not seem to look at the modem status pins, eg. Data Terminal
Ready (DTR). As a result diald tries to connect over and over again,
even when the modem is turned off!!
This could be worked around by setting the dial-fail-limit to a low
value, so that the connection gets blocked after the preset number
of trials. The problem is that I have not succeeded in getting it to
work: Additionally this does BLOCK further connection efforts. Since
the user doesn't have access to the gateway machine (and no root
privilege) the lock remains at least until the root user (me)
arrives! This is not the intended use, since a power up of the
modem, HUB, and user machine should be sufficient to reconnect to
the internet!!
Thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions!
PS1.
I know that a mailing list for diald exists, but since I'm not
subscribed to it I suppose I cannot post to it :( Somebody out there
who can forward my questions there?
PS2.
There are other packages that can solve the problem, masqdialer and
connect. Anybody having experience with those?
Best regards,
Svante Signell
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