Re: [gentoo-user] Easy dialup for unprivileged user

[Mark Kirkwood]

Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> I'm looking at setting up a Gentoo box for my mother to use. One thing
> I'd like some input on is the business of dialing up.
>
> The constraints are that she must be able to dial up as an unprivileged
> user, and it must be easy (She will be migrating from an old imac
> running osx, so I want to make it as painless as possible!)
>
> I'm currently favoring the method outlined in:
>
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_a_Dialup_Connection#The_best_way:_Gentoo.27s_Network_Configuration
>
>
> specifically using Gentoo's /etc/conf.d/net with pppd configured for
> *on-demand* dialing, so it 'just happens' when needed.
>
> Now it pretty much does - but to trigger the ppp interface 'up' state I
> find myself doing stuff like:
>
> $ ping <ip of ISP nameserver>
>
> or similar, because hostname access will just return "host not found"
> immediately without trying to bring the link up. So while this
> workaround is ok for me, I would like to get it so that the ppp
> interface comes up more intuitively (or am I missing something
> obvious?... that would be nice!).
>
>

For the archives... this was happening because I had an empty 
/etc/resolv.conf. I needed to add some (initial) nameservers to make 
everything work as expected (i.e ping some-internet-hostname brings up 
the network). Of course once the dialup has happened, ppp can overwrite 
these nameservers with the ISP's ones...

My mother is using the machine now, and she likes the way the connect to 
internet "just happens" when she starts Firefox or Thunderbird... and 
Gnome's look and feel are not too vastly different from OSX... so the 
level of confusion is not too high :-). Probably the biggest thing to 
adjust to is the 3 button mouse - after the single button apple one!

Cheers

Mark
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