On Thu, 10 May 2001, Erik Stokhof wrote:

> The somewhat cryptic subject hides a (I hope) relatively simple problem: I
> have an old LCIII running NetBSD, and a newer StarMax running MacOS. I have
> a printer cable running between the two, and I want to connect them using PPP.
> This actually works. However, I have only one keyboard, and I would like
> the PPP connection to come up at will on request from the StarMax, whenever
> I tell Remote Only to connect.
> This actually works. Provided I already have a pppd process running.
> Now the problem: pppd times out, and I cannot reinitiate a connection remotely.

You could set "silent persist" in (say) /etc/ppp/peers/starmax, on the
NetBSD side, to keep the daemon from hanging up, and add "starmax" to
"pppd_peers" in /etc/rc.conf, to make it start on boot. You probably
also need "cdtrcts" and "local".

> Then I fount something in gettytab: the pp option, which is supposed to
> listen to the line, and call pppd as soon as it detects (what? DTR?
> traffic? I have no idea, and the man pages don't say). I have no way of
> checking what happens on the line.

There's more explanation in the gettytab(5) man page, and in the
distributed /etc/gettytab. If you only want a nailed up ppp
connection, and can use a MacOS telnet client for a shell, the first
way is much simpler. (You can use ipfilter to block "telnet" from the
outside interface.)

> Q1: is this supposed to work or must I restart pppd periodically using cron?
> Q2: are there any tools to find out what exactly happens on the line?

I think your missing piece is "silent persist".


Frederick