How to Get Access to the Internet using PPP

History

• In the far past: Once upon a time there was a poor student who desperately tried to get this d... i4l running. He gathered smallest hints and spent a lot of money to the Deutsche Telekom (telephone company in Germany).
• The LRZ asked him how-to, when the thing happened to work something.
• The original version of this page appeared in the beginning of May 1996 as a suggestion for a LRZ info paper. Some smaller accidents were built-in, however, e.g. the FTP transfer did not work properly.
• May 13rd: It worked. Sma
• 6. Juli:
  • Die IP-Adresse des ersten LRZ-Ascens war falsch. Korrigiert in der Einführung und im Script rc.isdn.
  • Viele Leser schrieben von Problemen mit SysV-init/simpleinit. Daher wurde das bei der Konfiguration stärker berücksichtigt.
  • Das Problem "CHAP" wurde - obwohl am LRZ nicht relevant - erklärt.
  ll speech at LRZ within a workshop concerning "accessing the LRZ via telephone lines". The page was converted from plain ASCII to HTML. A lot of people wrote emails and wanted to have this page. Dr. Werner Becker mounted it to the WWW under URL <http://o01.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~web/ISDN.html>
• May 16th: New version - sorry, it had bugs!
  • /etc/rc.d/rc.isdn: added second Ascend server
  • /etc/rc.d/rc.isdn: the non-PPP device isdn1 -> isdn0
  • /etc/rc.d/rc.isdn: removedthe first "0" in "isdnctrl addphone ipppx in" (small bug)
  • /etc/ppp/pap-secrets widened
  • /etc/hosts: added 2nd Ascend server, but killed the "lrz" entry
• May 17th: because I forgot something in the last version it did not work.
  • /etc/ppp/options: Removed "remotename lrz" entry.
  • /etc/rc.d/rc.isdn: added option "remotename lrz-px" to the ipppd calls (with x=0,1)
  These changes worked.
  Also a first good attempt to handle email off-line was suggested. But it was LRZ specific.
  • added email chapter
  • added "lrzmail" and "sunmail" to /etc/hosts.
• May 18: No bigger changes - wrote this history. I'm working on INN implementation...
• May 21: I could mount this page at an own site. The newest version of this page is found at <http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~ui161ab/www/isdn/>
  Changes:
  • email chapter: added suggestion how to substitute chma (not ideal)
  • email chapter: corrected MASQUERADE_AS entry in /usr/src/sendmail/cf/cf/linux.dl4mhk.mc (host name had been wrong)
• June 20th: INN is looking very reproachful, but:
  • improved "look" of the pages
  • divided now the several subjects (installation, email, news etc.) into separate pages
  • made this English translation of the original German page
  • widened the introduction,
  • removed some few bugs.
  • The page was completely rebuilt for kernel 2.0.0, so these scripts have changed:
    • /etc/rc.d/rc.isdn: The line
      echo "0" >/etc/lines.active # makes it comfortable.
      was added.
    • The neton and netoff scripts were substituted against the very large but comfortable script /sbin/isdn
  • made this English translation of the original German page (uff...)
• June 30th: My Usenet system is running since four days now.
  • The Usenet page (in German) is finished.
  • The Email page was modified slightly.
• July 6th:
  • The first LRZ Ascend IP address had been wrong. Fixed in the introduction and the /etc/hosts file.
  • The testing whether the line is ok is improved. Now the script /sbin/isdn pings directly to the dial-in server, not to a more distant computer. The same way the scripts /sbin/transmail and /sbin/transnews work - but here also the mail/news host is tested. If this machine is off-line no more dial attempts are made.
  • Many readers had trouble concerning SysV-init/simpleinit. So I described this problem more extensive.
  • The "CHAP" problem is now described (not important at the LRZ, however).
• July 19th:
  • Installation: CHAP authentification described now more elegant
  • Instead of kernel 2.0.0 with patch1+2 now 2.0.6 "naked"
• July 28th:
  • Installation: The ipppd stop file for shutdown was enhanced: A "ifconfig device down" prevents "busy" messages.
  • email: Added "FEATURE(nocanonify)" to the sendmail configuration file.
• July 29th:
  • Usenet: "Täglicher Kleinkram": "sendnews" command built in.
• September 1st:
  The pages have been revised completely: it is not longer bound at the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum as provider, ant it is written now so generally, that in most cases you should be able to setup your system with it. This collection is protected now under the conditions of the GPL, so you may use and copy it as you like.
  Changes:
  • A database with data of providers is built up. It is used actively in the scripts.
  • /etc/hosts:
    • lrz-p0 -> prvdr0
    • lrz-p1 -> prvdr1
    • lrzmail -> getmail
    • lrznews -> getnews
    These names also were changed in the scripts - so be careful with updates. I apologize for any unconveniences, but I had to do this.
  • The scripts /sbin/isdn, /sbin/transmail and /sbin/transnews contained a bad bug, making the more applications open in one channel concept not work. Bug fixed.
  • All scripts were revised intensely.
  • The english translation of the Usenet chaper is finished.
  • A new chapter is born: ftp on demand!
  • The email chapter is now prepared in a way you can use it for other providers.
  • You can now download these pages (tared zipped).
• October 20th:
  The scripts had some new bugs, which are fixed now hopefully. you can now see only simple easy-to-understand example scripts in the pages, but can load down very sophisticated easy-to-use scripts. Einige Schönheitskorrekturen.
• November 21st:
  
  • Matthias Heßler suggested to create better names for the configuration scripts (i4l.provider and i4l.secrets).
  • Kernel configuration: the "Code Maturity-Level" question is now answered with "No". Should work.
  • The scripts rc.isdn, /sbin/isdn, /sbin/transmail, /sbin/transnews got some polish. Some small bug fixes. rc.isdn was cleaned a bit more intensively.
• December 1st:
  The scripts became faster because sleep time amounts were decreased.
• January 26th 1997:
  "isdn" is dead - long lives "connect"! A totally new script package handles now the connection to the Internet - via isdn4linux or via modem. Multiple connections and route definitions are possible now, also limited dial-in attempts and more.
• 24. Februar 1997:
  Some more or less serious bux were fixed, some changes were made. Many thanks to Dirk Husfeld <husfeld@usm.uni-muenchen.de> and Herbert Thielen <Herbert.Thielen@lpr.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de> for lots of most valuable hints and remarks.
  • Provider templates: IP now is named correctly IP_ADDRESS.
  • The english installation page had a wrongly described chap-secrets file.
  • S.u.S.E. uses a start script /sbin/init.d/i4l_hardware in newer Distributions - this is honored now.
  • The PID of the connect script is now determined by "$$", and lock file handling is corrected somewhat.
  • Now before testing whether PPP negotiation was successful, a test of the physical line is made.
  • Lots of small and big bugs are fixed.
  • If connect could open only the second defined remote, and connect is called again, an unwanted second connection established in the old script version. Fixed.
  • IMPORTANT: all files formerly written to /tmp are moved to /var/lib/connect now! This touches the scripts /etc/ppp/ip-up and /sbin/connect. This was done because of the system security.
  • All absolute paths are substituted by variables.
  So version 1.0 officially is released! :-) But sorry: more changes must wait, because I will start a stressful new job very soon. :-(