What is pppdialer?

pppdialer (and associated scripts) are meant to standardize and simplify
setup and maintanence of ISP services and outbound ppp
connections.  pppdialer in particular offers a much less processor
resource intensive means of dialing a remote system, and logging in to
establish a ppp session than is typically found with executing a
"chat" and "expect" based script from pppd.  While not meant to replace
chat and expect fully, pppdialer is meant to handle well over 99% of those
simple applications which simply involve connecting to a remote system or
terminal server with a "Hayes standard" that form the backbone of dial-up
isp calling today.

One typically uses pppdialer in place of "chat" as the "connect" argument
of pppd.  pppdial will perform the dialout and login using common
arguments.  In particular, pppdialer uses AT commands to perform
actual dialing and then expects to receive either a "login" or
"username" prompt followed by a "password" prompt.  It is not meant to
handle or be modified for any "varients", however it can handle multiple
phone numbers to try for a given ip service provider.

For "pppdialer" a new /etc/ppp/dial-secrets will hold the terminal server
login ids and passwords associated with each telephone number.  One
typically uses pppdial from "pppd" in a manner similar to:

  pppd device speed "connect pppdialer tel-number" call isp-name

with a "/etc/ppp/dial-secrets" file similar to:

tel-number login-id password-id  cmdstring

The third "cmdstring" option is used for those systems that expect a
command to be issued to start ppp sessions after login, such as a Cisco
AS2500 terminal server.  For systems which login directly to a ppp session
(as most isp accounts do) the cmdstring entry should not be used.

Any questions about the pppdial package can be sent to dyfet@ostel.com.
