Hello, After many troubles and trials diald is finally running on my gateway in a small network of four computers (all running Linux :-) ) All computers can connect to internet via the gateway and an external ISDN modem.
- All works fine, except that bringing down the link takes a VERY long time, too long for my wallet. If you log what is happening using the FIFO you see that most packet transfers take a very short time and then the link is still up waiting for the timers to count down to zero and releasing the connection. Trying to reduce the timeout numbers does not improve the situation, the connection frequency increases instead. - Another issue is that the gateway machine should not be touched by other users (i.e. the rest of the family). This means that the FIFO is not accessible via dctl (no root users). - The intended function is as follows: When other users (eg. the kids in the afternoons) want to connect to the internet, they power up the gateway machine (if not on), diald starts on that one, they power up the external modem and the HUB (100MB ethernet), start the user machine and off they go. Everything is OK so far. - Now comes the problems: When the user has finished he/she should log out and shut down the user computer. (Shutting down as an ordinary user is another issue, not fully solved in my opinion :-( ). He/she should also power off the HUB and the modem (not the gateway)! Diald does not seem to look at the modem status pins, eg. Data Terminal Ready (DTR). As a result diald tries to connect over and over again, even when the modem is turned off!! This could be worked around by setting the dial-fail-limit to a low value, so that the connection gets blocked after the preset number of trials. The problem is that I have not succeeded in getting it to work: Additionally this does BLOCK further connection efforts. Since the user doesn't have access to the gateway machine (and no root privilege) the lock remains at least until the root user (me) arrives! This is not the intended use, since a power up of the modem, HUB, and user machine should be sufficient to reconnect to the internet!! Thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions! PS1. I know that a mailing list for diald exists, but since I'm not subscribed to it I suppose I cannot post to it :( Somebody out there who can forward my questions there? PS2. There are other packages that can solve the problem, masqdialer and connect. Anybody having experience with those? Best regards, Svante Signell
