I've been rather successful at installing linux (Debian etch flavor) on an older computer of mine and I've been rather successful at installing/initialising and connecting to my ISP via dial-up with an external modem using wvdial.

My question is, what is a good utility or program that I can use to monitor the dial-up connection?

Right now I get quite basic feedback from the terminal window that I've connected when I connect but it doesn't tell me how fast I've connected and the overall status of my connection is somewhat of a mystery to me while I'm connected.

On the plus side, I actually can both connect and disconnect!!!
(cue the wildly hysterical applause and cheering of the crowd)

Thankx in advance for any and all information that may be provided.

pantherlehr

I'm not sure what you mean - display data in/data out like netstat, tcpspy/tcpstat, networkstatus, or do you mean display things like connected/not connected, serial line speed?

Since you're using Debian, you can use "apt-cache search" to find keywords.

Since I'm rather new to linux/Debian I really don't know what utilities/programs would be available.

But since I'm connecting via dial-up I think that I'd start by looking at something that could display "connected/not connected, serial linespeed" or something like that.

Those other utilities/programs that you mentioned (netstat, tcpspy/tcpstat, networkstatus), what are they used for?
Might they work for my needs?

pantherlehr

i dont know if kppp will do it, is it there for your distr?

Kppp has an icon on the desktop (KDE) but when I double click on it it states, "Failed to execute child process" and "kppp" (permission denied).

In short, kppp hasn't worked for me yet. But wvdial works just fine.

I'm just looking for some way to 'monitor' the connection or get basic information regarding the connection which I can't do right now. All that I can do now is to determine that I'm connected or that I'm not.

pantherlehr

#su
#kppp

or use sudo kppp after setting appropriate permissions

To amani:

Just tried that and I still get "permission denied" which is unusual due to the fact that I believe that I should be acting as root with the 'su' command....isn't that correct?

Haven't tried 'sudo kppp' cuz I didn't want to have to go to the trouble of changeing the permissions. Guess I'll have to!

pantherlehr