Setting up ppp on RedHat using netcfg (known to work for 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Based on Jerome Johnson's first writeup - 1998 More accurate transcriptions and added material - July 8, 1999 (Peter Teuben) Tailored for astronomy :-) - November 23, 1999 (Peter Teuben) Fixed new Astronomy setup - June 27, 2000 (Peter Teuben) 0) The following files are read/modified/used... by "netcfg" /etc/sysconfig/network /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/* /etc/resolv.conf /etc/hosts Make sure you haven't screwed them up. If you have, you may have to reinstall the relevant rpm packages or know what you do. Here is my /etc/sysconfig/network NETWORKING=yes FORWARD_IPV4=no HOSTNAME=localhost GATEWAYDEV= GATEWAY= Make sure /dev/modem is a symbolic link to your modem. E.g.: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Aug 1 12:09 /dev/modem -> ttyS3 (if you use PCMCIA card, this link is not setup until you have inserted the card). If you want to setup networking for a modem, make sure you don't have an ethernet running that is already using a default gateway (for laptops this often is the case if you have one of those dual ether/modem PCMCIA card). Check with the command "ifconfig" if you only have the "lo" interface, and not the "eth0" interface. 1) Run netcfg as root. Click on the "Names" button. Hostname: localhost Domain: localdomain Search for hostnames in additional domains: astro.umd.edu Nameservers: 129.2.14.2 (our astronomy name server) 128.8.5.2 (campus name server) 128.8.74.2 (campus name server) 128.8.76.2 (campus name server) (you really only need to enter 1, but can't hurt) This will take care of /etc/resolv.conf 2) Click on the "Interfaces" button. There should be a line something like: lo 127.0.0.1 none yes active This is your local loopback interface. It allows you to telnet, finger, ftp, xhost... your own machine when it's not otherwise connected to a network. Don't mess with it. You may also see lines with ethN or pppN (where N is some number like 0, 1, 2...), just ignore them for the moment. 3) Click "Add" Select "PPP" Click "OK" Phone Number: 3012090700 Don't use PAP. Dont fill in PPP login name or password yet. And btw, you do need a WAM account to have access to the annex modem banks. 3) Click "Customize" Click "Hardware" Select "Use HW flow control..." Unselect "Esc control chars..." Select "Abort connect on error..." Line speed: 115200 Port: /dev/modem PPP Options: (leave blank) 4) Click "Communication" Modem Init String: ATZ Modem Dial Command: ATDT Phone Number: 3012090700 Remove all the Expect/Send entries and append the following lines below. This sets up your chat script. The left column is for "Expect", the right column for "Send" username: DarthVader (fill in your WAM username) password: the_darkside (fill in your WAM password) annex: ppp TIMEOUT 5 Note: you may want to protect the directory /etc/sysconfig since it will contain passwords: chmod 700 /etc/sysconfig 5) Click "Networking" Unselect "Activate interface at boot..." Select "Set default route ..." Unselect "Restart PPP..." 6) Click "PAP" This should be blank. 7) Click "Done" Click "Save" 8) You should now have a line like this in your netcfg "Interfaces" menu: ppp0 no no (you may also see ppp1 or ppp2 etc. if you already had other previous entries) 9) Before we activate the modem, you may want to look at the system logs. Type the following command in another xterm: tail -f /var/log/messages 10) Select that pppN line you just added, it should be highlighted now, and click "Activate", and watch the output in the system logfile you just opened. 11) Listen to your modem dial and connect. Wait about 30 seconds. The logfile should contain some entries like the following: Jul 8 23:42:10 roald pppd[1782]: pppd 2.3.7 started by root, uid 0 Jul 8 23:42:10 roald ifup-ppp: pppd started for ppp4 on /dev/modem at 115200 Jul 8 23:42:35 roald pppd[1782]: Serial connection established. Jul 8 23:42:35 roald pppd[1782]: Using interface ppp0 Jul 8 23:42:35 roald pppd[1782]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/modem Jul 8 23:42:36 roald pppd[1782]: local IP address 128.8.24.156 Jul 8 23:42:36 roald pppd[1782]: remote IP address 128.8.10.124 Once you see the local and remote IP address, you can run ifconfig. It should look something like: lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Bcast:127.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP BROADCAST LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3584 Metric:1 RX packets:86 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 TX packets:86 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:128.8.22.217 P-t-P:128.8.10.115 Mask:255.255.0.0 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:44 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 TX packets:45 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 and to fully check if your routing works, type the command "route": Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 128.8.10.124 * 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0 127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo default 128.8.10.124 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0 Congratulations, you are now online! 12) To close the connection, highlight your ppp0 (or whichever) interface again, and click on "Deactivate". Watch the following lines in your system log: Jul 9 00:00:27 roald pppd[1782]: Terminating on signal 15. Jul 9 00:00:28 roald pppd[1782]: Connection terminated. Jul 9 00:00:28 roald pppd[1782]: Connect time 17.9 minutes. Jul 9 00:00:28 roald pppd[1782]: Sent 24346 bytes, received 27436 bytes. Jul 9 00:00:29 roald pppd[1782]: Exit. 13) The command line equivalents of this procedure are the following: ifup ppp0 ifdown ppp0 You can also re-configure the scripts such that they can be executed by any user, but be aware of the previously mentioned passwords in the networking scripts, and the permissions on the directories. 14) You can add more interfaces, e.g. for the annex-express the entries are almost identical. Just change the phone number to 301-864-2087. Phone numbers can change, check the relevent UMD/OIT web pages if you keep failing for unknown reasons (i know, that's a catch-22). If you have problems with new modems or ISPs, first try and walk your way through manually using "minicom" or a similar terminal program. Then enter the correct Expect/Send pairs in the chat script as in 4) Also, the Nameservers sometimes change, you may want to check the UMD/OIT web pages for the latest updates on those. 15) For configuring your mail and news servers you probably need the following names. It will depend a bit if you use WAM, GLUE, or some other system on or off campus which ones are ok: news-servers: news.wam.umd.edu news.glue.umd.edu news.umd.edu mail out-servers: smtp.wam.umd.edu smtp.glue.umd.edu imap in-servers: imap.wam.umd.edu imap.glue.umd.edu pop in-servers: pop.wam.umd.edu pop.glue.umd.edu 15) For off-campus non-UMD ISP users you may need to install certificates from http://ca.umd.edu/