SUMMARY: Configuring PPP on Solaris 2 System

From: John.Waterhouse@baesema.co.uk
Date: Tue Feb 06 1996 - 05:08:00 CST


Dear Sun-Managers,

Many thanks to the people who responded to my question about a PPP connection
to Demon. The original message is at the end of the file.

There certainly appears to be some confusion over whether it should be
possible to make a ppp connection where you do not know the IP address of the
machine that you are connecting to. However, I can confirm that it definitely
now works on my system which is a sparc LX running Solaris 2.5 :-)

I had a total 6 replies directly from the list and also some very useful
information from a Sun engineer who I logged a call with.

In summary the responses were:

1 - Me too
1 - Can't be done
2 - Use different PPP software
1 - Make change using ifconfig after connecting to remote system
1 - Use address of 0.0.0.0 for local system

These replies are attached in full at the end of the file.

In fact I discovered it was much easier than I thought. The way that I got it
working was as follows.

1/ Edit /etc/rc2.d/S69inet to turn off the dynamic routing daemons routed and
rdisc.

2/ Define any machine that you know exists at the demon end as your remote ppp
system in asppp.cf and /etc/hosts. Two that I tried that worked were
158.152.1.222 and 158.152.1.65 but I think you could use any of their systems.
It doesn't appear to matter if you get connected to something completely
different.

3/ Define your nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf as 158.152.1.193 and the domain
to be demon.co.uk

4/ Add a default route via your ppp interface. ie whatever IP address you have
been allocated by demon for your own machine (not the remote server).

#route add default <ip_address> 0

5/ Ping some address, for example www.sun.com and the modem will dial up and
you should get a response back before long. Netscape and Mail work fine as
well.

One other gotcha which is worth knowing about is that when the demon system
asks which protocol you would like to use, the correct response is "nolqm" not
"ppp" as you might expect. Choosing ppp will result in you getting
disconnected after 50-60 seconds as suns asppp doesn't appear to send line
quality messages.

I hope this is of some use to others out there.

John Waterhouse
Computer System Manager
BAeSEMA Ltd
New Malden, England
Phone: (++44) (0)181 942 9661 Fax: (++44) (0)181 949 8067
Email: john.waterhouse@baesema.co.uk

Replies received:

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John --

We had the same problem when using 2.4. It did not support dynamic IP address
allocation, so we got "dp4.0", a PD PPP package. It works great (more stable
than the Sun version of PPP) and allows dynamic IP address allocation.

good luck.

Charles Mengel
LGI
Columbia Maryland USA

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John,

I just did this , this weekend. My way is a little awkward,
but it will work for now.

I pick an address that I knew was a possiblity and put if the ifconfig
After I did my ping and the system got connected, I looked in the
/etc/log/asppp.log and got the address I was assigned.

The I did a manual ifconfig with the new address

ifconfig ipdptp0 new-address up.

Then things worked.

I will let you know if I find a better way.

Let me know what you get.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: John.Waterhouse@baesema.co.uk
From: ttonino@bio.vu.nl (Thomas Tonino)
Subject: Re: Configuring PPP on Solaris 2 system
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I have:

ifconfig ipdptp0 plumb void termserv down

as the first line in my asppp.cf.

void has 0.0.0.0 as IP, and termserv is 130.86.80.80.

I don't know what termserv is ctually. It doesn't reply to pinging, but it
was what I remembered (falsely) to be the IP of the terminal server. The
actual IP is 130.37.86.3 however. But if I use that the link doesn't seem
to work.

The link can the be opened with something like

route add termserv termserv 0
ping termserv

Maybe there is a conflict there, if the real terminal server ip is put there.

Good luck,

Thomas Tonino

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I'm not sure with your particular version, but using Morningstar PPP or
the version that comes with linux is as easy as just leaving out the
addresses. It will request / accept whatever the other end says the
address is.

------
Jeff Fisher Gazette MIS
jeff@kcrg.com Cedar Rapids, IA, US

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John,
        this is a me too. I am configuring 2.5, I have found regardless of what
machine I decleare in the uucp files, I have no problem logging into my provider
However, once ppp is negotiated and I can send ip packets out, nothing ever
is returned -- I have not determined if this is a routing error, or a problem
in the configuration of the dynamic ip addressing, which asppp in 2.5 is suppose
to handle. I'll be sending this question to the list as soon as I pull out
some interesting entries in the asppp.log, which I have questions about. In the
mean time if you find any useful info/tips on this please post.

                                        Mark Sherman
                                        sys. eng
                                        mark@ccifl.com

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From: pasken@thunder.slu.edu (Robert Pasken)
Message-Id: <9601271700.AA13673@thunder.slu.edu>
To: John.Waterhouse@baesema.co.uk
Subject: Re: Configuring PPP on Solaris 2 system
Content-Type: text

        The answer may you cann't setup PPP this way. Solaris-2.4 is unable
to handle Dynamic Address Allocation. It must have a fixed IP address.
Solaris-2.4 could be fixed to deal with a dynamic addressing, but because
of a bug it would work only once and then never ever work again untill the
systems was rebooted. Solaris-2.5 was supposed to fix this problem, I haven't
seen it work yet though. It appears the bug wasn't fixed. Sun also removed
the server side of PPP from the release making it impossible for a desktop
machine to a single user from a PC.

RWP
 
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The original Message:

>Hi Sun-Managers,

>I'm trying to configure asppp on a sparc lx running solaris 2.5 for internet
>access. My internet service provider is Demon.

>Getting the modem working and the UUCP files configured was easy and I can
>dialup the remote system ok.

>The problem is that the remote system which answers when the ISPs number is
>dialled can be one of many, so it is impossible to know what the IP address of
>the remote system is until it has answered.

>I have RTFM but it isn't clear (to me anyway) how you are supposed to configure
>asppp for this situation.

>I'm sure loads of people out there must have done this as already, so I would
>be extremely grateful if anyone can give me some clues as to what I need to do.

>Regards

>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>John Waterhouse
>Computer System Manager
>BAeSEMA Ltd
>New Malden, England
>Phone: (++44) (0)181 942 9661 Fax: (++44) (0)181 949 8067
>Email: john.waterhouse@baesema.co.uk
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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