Dialup disconnects

Zygo has reported this for 4.1alpha7, and reports that /etc/ppp/chap-secrets and /etc/ppp/pap-secrets has to be manually created, otherwise 'ppp' will disconnect after a few seconds.

This is an old bug, and was fixed. I have hunted back through my blog, and at:
http://puppylinux.com/news/news400a7-400b.htm
found where I had reported the solution.

Quoting from that page, April 4, 2008:
Ok, I found the problem. Fairly recently, I noticed that the 'wvdialconf' utility, which is executed as 'wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf', output a message that /etc/ppp/options may conflict with /etc/wvdial.conf. So, I made a small but fatal change in the pupdial script, I renamed /etc/ppp/options to something else before executing wvdial, then renamed it back afterward.

Now, looking in /etc/ppp/options, it has some interesting things, particularly "usepeerdns". Now, it's my guess that the pppd daemon reads that file and if it doesn't exist then doesn't fetch the DNS from the ISP.

/etc/ppp/options is a file that I have always had in Puppy, it's not part of any particular package. It goes right back to the very early days pre-0.1 when I was first trying to get dialup to work. We need to study the relationship between this file and wvdial and pppd, but for now I have just fixed it by leaving /etc/ppp/options alone.

Interesting, this also fixes the problem I had in (400) alpha7 in which /etc/ppp/chap-secrets and pap-secrets was not getting written to, so I have removed that "fix" from pupdial also.

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Comments

chap-,pap-secrets
Username: BarryK
If you look in /usr/sbin/pupdial line 485, you will see where the old fix is commented out. Zygo, you should really find out why you are getting this bug, but a last resort would be to uncomment these lines. A last resort permanent fix would be to somehow determine that wvdial has not written to those files, then activate the manual creation of them, then redial. ...but is is far preferable to find out why wvdial has the problem in the first place.

please wait
Username: zygo
"I'm not in a position to test a pristine boot until later today. I'll try this and get back to you by midnight BST. BTW I have tried telling Puppy at boot to ignore my ms serial hdd but pmount still finds it as sda. I've tried 'puppy sda=none', 'puppy sr0=none' and a few others. I've given up looking for the internet page that suggested this (actually 'hda=none'). I suppose it was just built into that particular distro's kernel or the kernel came with by default in the past. This http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=32848 is not a tale of Puppy (linux-ntfs) laying low an ms hdd but it shows the suspision that many of us have. The alternative is to break the seal on my new PC's case and disconnect the drive.

re: pristine fails
Username: BarryK
"yes, and is that because pap-secrets and chap-secrets are not written to? With a pristine system, have you tried opening pupdial script in a text editor and uncommenting the lines I suggested? Does that fix it?

oops
Username: zygo
"If I manually setup pap-secrets and chap-secrets then dialup lasts with a pristine system. I have just connected and read your last post then disconnected and uncommented the if-else after line 485 in pupdial. I cleared the 2 files and pupdial has re made them. Just to be sure I will test that with a pristine system.

PupDial disconnects
Username: david17
"Using an external serial modem, I’ve found that PupDial sets up etc/ppp/chap-secrets as username * password and disconnects. Adding the required quotes doesn’t work as chap-secrets is overwritten each time PupDial is run. Alternatively, gnome-ppp-0.3.23-1.pet can be installed from a USB drive, but this time chap-secrets is left empty! However, when “username” “*” “password” is added it works faultlessly. :happy:"25 Dec 2009, 8:55"00347'PupDial disconnects"david17"Quotes are not necessary for the chap-secrets fields (etc/ppp/chap-secrets). username * password has to be added manually after installing gnome-ppp-0.3.23-1.pet with Puppy 4.3.1, as it is left blank."24 Feb 2010, 4:28"00347'

Tags: puppy