Old School dial-up problems with linux
 

I've successfully installed Debian (40r3 - etch, I believe) on an older computer system of mine (Athlon 800Mhz - Slot A chip - yeah it's that old, but it still works). I've also, apparently successfully installed an external modem as well.

While Debian seems to work just fine I don't seem to have much in the way of control over my external modem under the Gnome desktop.

The only way I have of making it dial my ISP under Gnome is to go to the 'networking' drop down menu and click on 'dial-up' and then click 'activate' at which point it automatically dials and connects.

Sounds great except that I don't know how fast I've connected to my ISP (unlike in windows). Plus the connection seems rather slow even by dial-up standards. And the only way I have of disconnecting is to unplug the external modem. I'd really prefer a bit more control over it than that.

Under KDE I've run KPPP but that program doesn't seem to see the modem (in all likelyhood I've probably not set up KPPP correctly, but I don't know).

Any suggestions as to where I could look to get some answers would be most appreciated!!

Thankx in advance for any information!!

'man pppd'

It's all there - just pretty horrible to read through.

If you look in /etc/ppp/ you should have an 'options' file which are the global options.
In /etc/ppp/peers you should have various other files with information specific to connecting to a variety of ISPs. Any options in here will also override what's in 'options'.

If you configure pppd for 'on demand' and 'persistent', then ensure that pppd is run on boot, your internet connection can magically go up and down on its own.

The various dialling tools all use this; they all execute pppd with something like "pppd call myisp".

The configuration script "pppconfig" is very sensible, but since Gnome has already set up, you may as well find out if Gnome created a file in 'peers' or if its doing something silly like storing that information elsewhere, in which case you're better off running 'pppconfig'.

Once you have set up the dialup scripts properly and can invoke 'pon myisp' and 'poff', then look into starting pppd on boot (if you want on-demand dialling).

One trap to look out for (and pppconfig handles this properly) is that the 'options' file usually has the line:
auth
Since most ISPs will not authenticate themselves at your request, it's safest to set that line to 'noauth' instead.