diald - we don't need no steenkin' diald!

[Bruce Smith <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Last weekend, while the blizzard was going on outside, 
I decided to configure my Linux box to do "demand dialing"
or dial the internet automatically whenever a program tries
to access the internet.  Since my PC was already setup as an 
IP-Masquerading box, it would also dial the internet
automatically whenever another PC on my home LAN tried to 
access the internet (including my wife's Win95 PC).

I started out by downloading the "diald" program that is
widely known to perform this task.  I had problems right
off because diald would not compile.  So I was off to 
dejanews.com to find a solution.  The answer was there:
get a later version of diald.  While searching for an
answer to the diald compile problem I learned of another 
way to do demand dialing without the diald program.

You see, the standard "pppd" program, version 2.3.5 that 
comes standard with Redhat 5.2, has an option called "demand" 
that makes it run in the background and do demand dialing!

The catch:  you need to patch the kernel with a later version
of the ppp module.  (at least for the 2.0.X kernels)

Actually it's a _little_ more complicated than that.  There
is the kernel patch, then fixing the kernel patch so the 
kernel will compile, adding 4 or 5 options to pppd, poking
a value in a /proc file, adding some lines to /etc/conf.modules,
manipulating the routing table, and starting pppd differently.
Sounds complicated, but all very minor things.  Really!   :{)

And the result:  It works GREAT!

Now the reason for this email is, I'm writing up some notes
on what it took for me to get this working for my own benefit.
If there is interest from anyone else, I can post these notes
when I get them done.  Let me know . . .

P.S.  My notes WILL assume you know how to:  compile and run a 
      custom kernel, download and extract compressed tar files,
      add options to the pppd daemon, edit some config files,
      and maybe even create a script to start pppd.

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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