Wvdial

It's amazing! It's your wildest dream come true! Dialup networking for Linux that doesn't require chat scripts! This is not quite the same as the General Public License (GPL) that most Linux software uses. The LGPL is actually less restrictive -- you can use LGPL software inside your own programs, and you are not required to place your program under the GPL or LGPL. That means companies or individuals can, if they want, take all the code in WvDial and use it in a product without giving anyone their own source code. If you are not using our pre-compiled Debian package, you will need to compile WvDial yourself. This is not too difficult as long as you have a few things installed on your Linux system: pppd 2.2.0f or 2.3.5, with the pppd program preferably at /usr/sbin/pppd. gcc 2.7.2 or higher, with g++. GNU make; you may need version 3.75 or higher, I'm not sure. WvStreams; version 4.4 or higher. Almost any halfway modern Linux system should have all of these. The last is available from Building WvDial is a simple matter. First, check the Makefile to see if everything looks okay to you. By default, wvdial and wvdialconf will install in /usr/local/bin with their man pages in /usr/local/man/man1. That's probably right for most systems. Assuming you don't have any compile errors (and really, you shouldn't, right?) you now have an installed WvDial system. Again Debian users have a nice soft fuzzy warm cushion to land on: when installing the WvDial package, Debian's "dpkg" automatically runs wvdialconf and asks all the right questions to get you going. If you compiled manually, you have to go through a little bit more trouble -- but don't worry, not that much. The first thing to do is have wvdialconf detect your modem and create your initial configuration. 'su' to root and type the following: wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf If all goes well, your modem will be detected and its configuration stored in /etc/wvdial.conf. If it doesn't work, all is not lost but you will have to build the configuration completely by yourself. Read the wvdial(1) man page ("man wvdial") for more information about that. wvdialconf will scan all your /dev/ttyS serial ports except the /dev/mouse port (if you have a /dev/mouse link) because sometimes probing the mouse port can cause mouse problems. In any case, try not to move your mouse while wvdialconf is probing and you should be safe. After wvdialconf runs successfully (ie., you receive a message like the one above) it writes your configuration to /etc/wvdial.conf, the filename you gave it on the command line. My auto-generated wvdial.conf file looks like this: After [Dialer Defaults], the first four lines have been autodetected for your system, so don't worry if they look a little different. The next three lines are commented out. You need to edit the file to fill in the information about your Internet provider. Here's a sample completed wvdial.conf file: This contains all the information needed to dial my favourite non-existent Internet provider. If you use more than one modem, dial-in account, Internet provider, init string, or anything, you can use additional "override" sections in wvdial.conf to support this. See the wvdial(1) man page for more information. (Type "man wvdial") Now you've compiled, installed, and configured WvDial. Doesn't that make you mad at all the darn Debian users who didn't have to do any of this stuff? Well, now you've caught up with them. Sooner or later, everyone has to try dialing for the first time. Unlike other ppp dialers you might have used, the wvdial program runs in the foreground and never exits until you disconnect or have some kind of fatal error. You can also quit (and disconnect the phone, and clean up politely) by pressing CTRL-C. I think this is more user-friendly, myself. Of course if you want it to work like pppd you can always do it in the usual way: Anyway, if you have any gripes about the way this works, let us know. The more stuff you complain