[plug] PPP on demand

[John Summerfield]

> On Thu, Feb 10, 2000 at 06:17:04AM +0000, Christian wrote:
> > Peter Wright wrote:
> > > I have a feeling that this might be something to do with diald or a
> > > related program, and I was hoping some of you might be able to either
> > > point me towards more information or explain how it is done.
> > 
> > You can use diald but the latest versions of pppd support dial on
> > demand.  The main problem with an IP masquerading situation is that you
> > may have a situation where something sends out a DNS query and suddenly
> > your link is dialed back up: this *could* be what you want but often it
> > isn't.
> 
> Perhaps this situation could be avoided to some degree by running a
> domain namer server on the server machine....?

Nah. Still has to go to the world to get the IP address of 
www.kernelnotes.org

> 
> Well, I suspect the only time that a non-localnet DNS query would get
> send out would be when a connection to the net _is_ wanted.

Well, I note that Netscape takes ages to start when I'm not connected to 
the Internet, bust starts quickly when I am.

I've done all that I can find in Edit/Preferences - set my home page local 
etc.

> 
> Hmmm, though knowing Windows machines, I suspect that last sentence
> could be horribly incorrect.
> 
> > Another approach might be to use the masqdialer software which
> > provides a nice GUI interface to control the dialup on the
> > masquerading box.  This gives more control over dialing and is much
> > the same in behaviour as the normal Windows DUN.  Probably others
> > will be able to provide more information through their own
> > experiences.
> 
> Do you know where the masqdialer stuff can be found?

If you're running a web server, you could have a CGI script start pppd 
when accessed.

pppd needs to be setuid root, but according to its docs it's written to be 
run setuid root so users can use it.


-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.