Configuration Files for Dialing into OzEmail using PPP under Linux

/etc/ppp/options

lock
auth

To avoid unwanted options being used, delete or rename any ~/.ppprc and /etc/ppp/options.tty-name files.
Note: if you are not using the "pppd call ozemail" method of dialing in, you will probably need to remove the auth line.

/etc/ppp/peers/ozemail

# Communication device file specifying the serial port where modem is located:
/dev/modem

# Serial line speed to use to talk to the modem from the computer.
115200

# Use hardware (RTS/CTS) data flow control on the serial port
crtscts

# The peer will not authenticate itself.
noauth

# Add a default route.
defaultroute

# How to establish the serial connection.
connect 'chat -v -f /etc/ppp/ozemail-chat'

# The PAP authentication name to use in /etc/ppp/pap-secrets
user amcbeal

Substitute your OzEmail account name for amcbeal.

/etc/ppp/ozemail-chat

"" AT
OK "ATDT 62578155"
CONNECT

Of course 62578155 is the Canberra phone number of OzEmail.
This is the script you are most likely to need to modify if you are using these instructions to connect to a service provider other than OzEmail. The chat-ppp0 script on the netcfg page is another example of a chat script. You can copy that script to /etc/ppp/ozemail-chat and it will work as well. There is another example script which might give you some ideas, but will get ANU users onto the wrong subnet.

/etc/ppp/pap-secrets

# Secrets for authentication using PAP
# client        server  secret                  IP addresses
amcbeal         *       ca1op3x

Change the client and secret to your OzEmail username and password. The asterisk in the server column tells it to use the same client and secret for all servers.

/etc/resolv.conf

search anu.edu.au
nameserver 203.2.193.124
nameserver 203.2.192.124
nameserver 150.203.1.10

If your ISP isn't OzEmail you will of course need to find out the IP address of a nameserver you can use. You can still establish a ppp connection without a resolv.conf but instead of typing something like
netscape http://fred.usa.mil/ you would have to know the IP number ...
netscape http://123.456.7.89/

The search line tells the operating system what network to look in for unqualified host names. So for example if you type
telnet fred
your computer will attempt to connect to fred.anu.edu.au. Without the search line you would just get a message saying that fred is an unknown host.

Also check /etc/nsswitch.conf and make sure the hosts: line looks like this...

hosts:      files dns

This tells it to first try to look a hostname up in /etc/hosts, and if it doesn't find it there, to try DNS. The nsswitch.conf file in some versions of linux contains a lot of nisplus rubbish by default. It is a good idea to change all lines like

hosts:      files nisplus nis dns
services:   nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files

to this:

hosts:      files dns
services:   files

...unless you are really using NIS, since they slow your computer down.

Finally, if you have problems with DNS you can avoid having to type some IP addresses by putting frequently used ones in /etc/hosts. For example

127.0.0.1       localhost       localhost.localdomain
150.203.2.15    leonard