Re: Rationale behind the groups "dip" and "dialout"

[John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org>]

I wrote:
> You can, however, give each user her own chatscript and put it in her group
> so that only she and root can read it.

Viktor Rosenfeld writes:
> So each user would have its own ppp-on-script, or better yet: A global
> ppp-on-script in /usr/local/bin, which uses $HOME to access the user's
> private chatscript.  Let's see if how that works.

No.  Each user would have his own chatscript in /etc/chatscripts and his
own provider file in /etc/ppp/peers, with names like
/etc/chatscripts/viktors-ppp and /etc/ppp/peers/viktors-ppp.  The
administrator would set these up using pppconfig in the normal fashion and
then chown the chatscripts appropriately.  Viktor could then start up ppp
with 'pon viktors-ppp' but when John ran the same command it would fail,
and only Viktor and root would be able to read
/etc/chatscripts/viktors-ppp.

I wrote:
> Use something other than chat to handle the scripted login.

Viktor Rosenfeld writes:
> Well, right now, I'm using kppp, to establish the PPP connection,..

I meant substitute a different command for chat in the 'connect' line in
/etc/ppp/peers/<provider>.  Anything that reads standard input and writes
standard output will work.  Expect is often used to get a password from the
user.

It might also be possible to use chat's new environment variable and/or
include capability to get a password from another file.
-- 
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin