On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Jason S. wrote:

> I figured I'd chime in here with the results of my experiences, in the
> nature of a reply (really an adjunct) to Bill's excellent advice.
> 
  <original messages snipped for brevity>
> 
> Here I had an annoying problem.  I have two ISPs - Mindspring (hooray!) and
> Earthlnk (so-so).  I could get NetBSD online consistently with EL but not
> with MS.  So I logged into MS with a terminal window in Open Transport.
> 
> Here was the problem:
> 
> The ppp scripts I had dl'd assumed that the ppp server would print
> "CONNECT" upon connect and wait for a CR (the chatscript included ' CONNECT
> ""').  But the MS ppp server didn't do this - it just proceeded to the
> login prompt.  pppd (or chat - whatever) apparently sat around and waited
> for "CONNECT", which never happened.  When I removed this line from the ppp
> chatscript, everything worked perfectly.

Very interesting, especially since the CONNECT is not provided by the
remote system (ie, your ISP), but rather by your modem itself when it
establishes a connection with your ISP's modem.  Perhaps you had different
set-up strings to disable connection messages?

> Advice:  login to your ppp server with a terminal window in OT (or MacPPP
> or whatever) and see what happens.  Compare this to your chatscript.

Very good advice!  But if you can't get that to work, you can always turn
on debugging of the chat script itself.  Just put a line in your
/etc/syslog.conf file with the following:

	local2.*	/path/to/chat-log-file

Then, restart syslog (find its PID with a ps -ax command, and give it a 

	kill -HUP <pid>

The resulting log file will show you what chat is looking for (expecting),
what it actually saw, whether or not it found a match, as well as anything
that chat sends to the other end.
 
> >If your ISP supports ppp under MacOS, STEAL ITS CONFIGURATION!!!!!!!!
> >The ATXXX string in ppp.setup.tgz was stolen right out of my copy of MacSLIP.
> >Your modem will probably want something else.
> 
> I tried this.  It didn't work.  God knows why not.  (After all, its string
> works fine with OT). 

Probably because of initialization string differences...

> Here's another approach:
> 
> Use the dial-up terminal emulator program that came with your modem to
> steal its string.  (Just set the terminal emulator to local echo and dial
> some number - I used my own home number [busy signal - who cares]. The
> string should appear in the terminal window.)

Works good to see if you are communicating with the modem, but not very
helpful to see what the ISP is sending back!  :)

> >If you are having chat script problems, I've pulled Paul Goyette's debug
> >helpter out of the demand-dial ppp kit, and put it in ftp://ftp.macbsd.com/
> >pub/NetBSD/contrib/ppp-setup and it's the ppp-debug file. There's a
> >readme. Run it, then try ppp. All the stuff chat sends and sees will
> >go to the console. Or you can change the /dev/console phrase in the 11th
> >line (echo "local2.*   /dev/console") to some file, say /var/log/info.
> >Then everything will go to that file (you might have to "touch /var/log/info"
> >first, though).
> >
> >Now you should be able to see what's going wrong. Assuming it's the
> >chat script.

And all that my little `debug helper' does is add a line to the
/etc/syslog.conf file and restart syslog.  (Actually, it also makes sure
that chat is started with the -v (verbose) option, but you probably have
that already.)

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