Smpppd As Dial-Up Assistant - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 - ADMINISTRATION Administration Manual

/etc/init.d/ypbind

17.7 smpppd as Dial-up Assistant

Some home users do not have a dedicated line connecting them to the Internet. Instead,
they use dial-up connections. Depending on the dial-up method (ISDN or DSL), the
connection is controlled by ipppd or pppd. Basically, all that needs to be done to go
online is to start these programs correctly.
If you have a flat-rate connection that does not generate any additional costs for the
dial-up connection, simply start the respective daemon. Control the dial-up connection
with a KDE applet or a command-line interface. If the Internet gateway is not the host
you are using, you might want to control the dial-up connection by way of a network
host.
This is where smpppd is involved. It provides a uniform interface for auxiliary programs
and acts in two directions. First, it programs the required pppd or ipppd and controls
its dial-up properties. Second, it makes various providers available to the user programs
and transmits information about the current status of the connection. As smpppd can
also be controlled by way of the network, it is suitable for controlling dial-up connections
to the Internet from a workstation in a private subnetwork.
17.7.1 Configuring smpppd
The connections provided by smpppd are automatically configured by YaST. The actual
dial-up programs KInternet and cinternet are also preconfigured. Manual settings are
only required to configure additional features of smpppd such as remote control.
The configuration file of smpppd is /etc/smpppd.conf. By default, it does not
enable remote control. The most important options of this configuration file are:
open-inet-socket = yes|no
To control smpppd via the network, this option must be set to yes. The port on
which smpppd listens is 3185. If this parameter is set to yes, the parameters
bind-address, host-range and password should also be set accordingly.
Starts the NIS client.
Basic Networking 255