Yeah I know, the irony -- MSN, Linux -- ok. I am trying out MSN as an ISP and I would really like to continue to use Linux as my OS for web surfing, I don't want to have to reconfigure all of my bookmarks and so on.

I have Googled this quite a bit and have experimented with just about every setting in kppp, tried the Gnome internet configuration lizard, but no joy. Just FYI, this included prefixing MSN/ or msn/ to my username, trying chap, pap/chap, and terminal style authentication, using the default/automatic IP and DNS settings and manually filling them in from the Windoze MSN connection data.

Regardless, the modem dials, connects, begins authentication -- but authentication fails, then ppp0 can't be found and kppp exits with an error 16 which translates to, "The modem hung up."

Can anyone give me a brief step by step of the correct procedure? Or has some protocol change made it impossible to connect to MSN via Linux?


Thanks,

Barton

what does msn give you. ie. phone number, username, password, connection type?
well what you may want to do is get more info on the error. the best way to do this is to go to command line interface as root. type wvdialconf <this will create your wvdial.conf file.
then edit the /etc/wvdial.conf file this will look something like this

[Modem0]
Modem = /dev/modem <<the file of your modem
Baud = 115200 << the baud rate
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
ISDN = 0
Modem Type = Analog Modem


[Dialer ricochet]
Username = joesmoe <<your username
Password = wdntulk2no <<your password
Phone = 3335557777 << your phone number to the isp
Inherits = Modem0



now once you have edited this you need to get pppd to work right
I have found that editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0
to be just the thing. it will look like this

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
USERCTL=yes <<can a user start this
PEERDNS=yes
TYPE=Modem << type of connection
DEVICE=ppp0 << name of the device as found in
<< /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-ppp0
BOOTPROTO=dialup
ONBOOT=no << to start on boot?
NAME=ricochet << name in wvdial.conf
CCP=off
PC=off
AC=off
BSDCOMP=off
VJ=off
VJCCOMP=off
LINESPEED=115200
MODEMPORT=/dev/modem
IDLETIMEOUT=600
DEMAND=no
PROVIDER=ricochet <<wvdial.conf again
DEFROUTE=yes
PERSIST=no
PAPNAME=wolfe2554 << papname for passwords
WVDIALSECT=ricochet << wvdial.conf
MODEMNAME=Modem0 <<wvdial.conf
DEBUG=yes << debug option

now that you have this all edited; edit /etc/syslog.conf
add these lines

daemon.* /var/log/pppmsg
local2.* /var/log/pppmsg

this will create a file in /var/log/pppmsg that will log all activity on the ppp connection
now type
service syslog restart
to activate the changes
then try
ifup ppp0
where ppp0 is the name of the script you edited earlier
and wait till it dies.
the look at /var/log/pppmsgs
to find the error.
then post findings.
what I do sometimes to trouble shoot is wvdial ricochet
which for me starts the dial and connects, it just never tries to start pppd connection
that just lets me know that the modem works on both ends.

try try try again
wolfe

MSN gave me username, password, phone number. I found some more info, e.g. ip, dns addresses, etc., using some ms-dos networking utils. I don't have a definitive answer on connection type though I have read that they use ms-chap authentication if that is what you are referring to.

I ran wvdialconf and the top ([Modem] portion was created, but the [Dialer ricochet] part was not. I cut that part from your post and pasted it into the /etc/wvdial.conf file, changing the variables to the corresponding values for my account.

Then I edited /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 to reflect what you posted and added the two lines to /etc/syslog.conf. The syslog service restarted fine.

A problem came up when I tried to run ifup. It isn't clear which script I should feed to ifup as an argument.

I tried it with /etc/wvdial.conf and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0. Neither actually dialed the modem and ifcfg-ppp0 barfed a fairly large number of error/syntax messages. I can post the results but maybe you can resolve this easily by specifying the proper syntax for the ifup command.


TIA,

Barton

ok ifup is a script that will start wvdial and pppd at the appropriate times. thanks for paying attention to script details by the way, alot of people would just of left the ricochet part even though it is an abritrary name one must see the details. so for me to start my internet I would type ifup ppp0. ifup will look into /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ and find ifcfg-ppp0 then it will execute this. this inturn tells ifup to start wvdial with the config for ricochet. wvdial dials according to script. by the way I could type wvdial ricochet and wvdial would start dial connect and wait for pppd to start. this is a good way to test username password number and connection. because if wvdial says that carrier detected waiting for prompt all is well up to that point. now as far as pppd goes. here is the hard part. you said that they use ms-chap this may be your problem as you must tell pppd what protocol to use when connecting. now I do not have a chap server to play with so I will direct you to dah da daaa a website. laughs at self. no sleep is never a good thing. http://www.linuxports.com/howto/ppp
now what I would expect is that you are trying to connect to an NT server that expects your computer to be windows. this means that your windows machine should have chap authentication by default. as it is you do not. so to test this hypothisis I suggest you go to a prompt and type wvdial ricochet. where ricochet is the name of the config in the wvdial.conf file. this will dial and attempt to connect to your isp. output the config here. we'll get this thing working!!!

Just to keep you posted: I have been working on this problem here and there. It appears as if ppp needs to have a specific option passed to make at compile time in order to be able to use the ms-chap authentication protocol.

This isn't much of a problem as it is a simple compile, but it does have some dependency repercussions. I am running a rh9 partition as my production system and that means (of course) the software packages are managed via RPM. Unfortunately the rpm software base (including Gnome) is not playing nice with the ppp tar ball code re: the internet config wizard, and so on.

There are a few paths to try from here. I think I'll start by installing the ppp src RPM that I just downloaded and try to rebuild or recompile ppp from there. I haven't had to use those parts of RPM before though so it is back to the learning curve. It's either that or learn how to configure the entire dialup communications subsytem by hand from the ground up, which would be useful to know, but it is all about time and choices. If you happen to know about that particular topic some words of advice would be appreciated.

Anyway, thanks for the help, I'll let you know how it goes.


Ciao,

Barton

I use MSN and connect using kppp.

For username you have to put

MSN/usernamehere

Is it case sensitive? I would have sworn that I tried MSN/username and msn/username and had authentication fail each time.

Did you have to do anything to ppp, recompile, etc. to enable ms-chap authentication? What distro and version of ppp are you using?


Thanks,

Barton

Nope, not a thing. It worked right off for me, with kppp. I'm using fedora core 2, with pppd 2.4. It's worked for every distro I've used.

MSN/username

And when you put in your username, don't put it as the email address (incase that's what you were doing)...

otherwise, I have no idea why it won't work for you.

<fanfare> Problem solved! </fanfare>

Apparently there were two snafus: 1) when I signed up for the msn isp service I chose to use a previously existing hotmail address as the username for my account. I noticed that this was causing some weirdness when I was checking my email -- at first the sign-in field would have my username w/o the domain, then when I clicked to fill in the password it would automatically jump to <username>@hotmail.com. I added another username to my msn isp account and then signed in to that msn account via kppp and it breezed through the authentication process. Unfortunately, when I tried to actually use the ppp connection to access anything on the net all I got was "page not found" errors.

This was because of problem 2) My ISA modem was configured incorrectly because it had its IRQ and COM port set by jumpers and as it turns out the IRQ and I/O port were reported to the serial drivers incorrectly at boot time due to Linux/ISA auto config quirks.

Mysteriously enough I had been using this exact same modem with the exact same jumper settings in Linux to connect to another ISP via kppp, and then via penggy and it worked fine. After I changed to msn, the ppp connection was b0rken. I am not really sure how the modem functioned properly in the past, it's puzzling.

Good news is, upon discovering that the IRQ's were being reported incorrectly to the serial drivers I changed the jumpers over to PNP, rebooted and then tried kppp with the new username and ::joy:: I am now back to surfing with Linux. After using it almost exclusively for several months having to boot into my old Windoze partition for a few hours each day felt like putting on some old uncomfortable clothes.

BTW, there is a lot of useful info re: modem troubleshooting in the Linux Modem Howto and the PPP Howto. The Loadable Kernel Module Howto and the Serial Howto are good reference material for the above as well. Thanks for all the help.


Ciao,

Barton

why would you want to? :S
the idea of linux is to escape
the greed M$
jst dl amsn or kopete