Re: pppd on demand trouble

[Donald Spoon <dspoon@astcomm.net>]

Sigmund Svertingsson wrote:
> Greetings, all.
>
> I'm running Woody on an old Pentium box as my 
> gateway/firewall/fileserver for my LAN here at Castillo del Lago (my 
> home).  Life is good here, and I'm really enjoying Debian, but I'm kind 
> of stuck with the demand dialing thing.
>
> If I comment out the "demand" and "persist" statements in 
> /etc/ppp/options and /etc/ppp/peers/provider, I can say "pppd call 
> provider" and the modem dials (and I post to the list asking for help).  
> I do get "tdb_store failed: IO Error," but the link comes up fine, and 
> here I am.
>
> If I uncomment "demand" and "persist," when I call pppd and then point 
> the browser of one of my masq'ed machines outside of my LAN, the Woody 
> box just sits there.
> Oh, I also have smbd running on the Woody box (shouldn't matter, I would 
> think.)
>
> This is obviously a problem that has been solved, just not by me :-/
>
> I don't know what else to toss out in the way of info for now, but will 
> cheerfully provide more if asked.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Siggy

One thing I have discovered in Debian to get Demand Dialing to work is 
the need to change a file name in /etc/ppp/... you have to change 
"no_ppp_on_boot" to "ppp_on_boot".

In order to understand this, try to decypher the /etc/init.d/ppp 
initscript.  It uses the presence of this file as a "trigger" to decide 
whether to start the pppd program in the demand mode at boot time or 
not.  In the demand mode, pppd is started and initialized to the point 
of doing the dialing, but stops there and waits for an appropriate 
packet the come along to make the call.  Without the file name change, 
it will NOT "initialize" into the demand mode, even if you have the 
"demand" function in your options file(s).

I would also suggest you open up this file with a text editor 
(no_ppp_on_boot) and read the comments there.  There are some useful 
things that you can do with it if you are interested in having them.

HTH,

-Don Spoon-