[techtalk] PPPoE troubles

[Darren Osadchuk]

I'm trying to get Linux to talk to my ADSL service. After quite a few
unsuccessful attempts with DHCP, I did a bit more poking around, and it
turns out that PPPoE is the way to go. Happily, progress is being made:
I've installed a PPPoE client (the one at
http://www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe.html), set things up in
/etc/ppp/options and /etc/ppp/pap-secrets (as per the HOW-TO at
http://sidhe.folkwolf.net/~chris/pppoe-howto), and I can establish a
connection and do some stuff. But, I'm still encountering a few
problems/annoyances. In no particular order:

1. I can establish a connection manually by typing 'pppd' as root, but only
if I first do a 'ifconfig eth0 up' command. Now, I'm trying to automate
this so the connection will be established at boot time, but my suspicion
right now is that if I have to bring the ethernet card up manually, then
it's not up at boot time. So, the connection won't be established. If I
type 'pppd' without doing the 'ifconfig...' bit, the output is a couple
lines with seems to indicate that linux has found my ethernet card, but
then nothing happens after that. If I hit return, I get back to the command
prompt, and then 'ifconfig' doesn't report anything at eth0.

2. To automate the process, the How-To says that I need to add a pppd
initialization script and make some symbolic links. The script is at
http://sidhe.folkwolf.net/~chris/pppoe-howto/pppd. I copied the script to
/etc/rc.d/init.d and made it executable (the permissions for it are the
same as for the other scripts in the directory), and made a symbolic link
in /etc/rc.d/rc3.d to the script with

  ln -s ../init.d/pppd S55pppd

(This is on a Red Hat 6.1 system; I've done the same thing for the other
run levels). When I boot the system, I get the following error message:

/etc/rc.d/rc: /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S55pppd: No such file or directory

This has me utterly confused, since /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S55pppd is there and
the pppd script that it links to is there, so I'm not sure what can't be
found.

3. Finally, when I establish a connection, I can telnet out, but
lynx/netscape aren't working. If I enter a URL I get a message 'blah blah
contacted, waiting for reply' but nothing happens after that. As far as I
know the Sympatico proxy server is supposed to be transparent, but if it
wasn't, would that be causing this particular problem?


______________________________________________________________________________
osadchuk at pangea.ca                             http://www.pangea.ca/~osadchuk/

Richard was thunderstruck: it had been like watching Emma Peel, Bruce Lee, and
a particularly vicious tornado, all rolled into one and sprinkled with a
generous helping of a mongoose killing a king cobra. That was how she moved.
That was how she fought.

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