PPP dialer (Re: TOS platform)

[Jo Even Skarstein <joska@nuts.edu>]

On Wed, 28 Jan 1998, Martin-Eric Racine wrote:

> a GEM version of Minit/Fsck to complete the package, plus a better
> Dialer that shows the same kind of info as the one in STiK.

Re. the dialer, there are three approaches to this:

1. A simple program that starts pppd, starts a clock and kills pppd
   again when you want to disconnect. This is what I've done with
   Connexion. Simple, but apart from telling how long you've been
   online it just saves you from typing 'pppd' and 'kill <pid>'.

2. A dialer that configures the serial-device, use a script to
   initiate a connection and then launces pppd with the proper
   arguments. This is my plan for Connexion2 (don't hold your breath,
   I've got plenty of other things to do ATM). It might also have a
   configuration-dialog for pppd. Disconnecting is simply done by
   killing pppd. BTW this method will make the clock more accurate.

3. Integrate pppd into a GEM-application (the dialer). This gives the
   dialer total control, but at the expence of a more complex
   implementation. I can't really see any major advantages compared to
   (2).

In all cases it's difficult to set many of the parameters that you can
set using STinG's dialer, as they're read by MiNTnet from various
config-files. If these deviates from the expected format somehow
(you'll never know what some people do) you can seriously mess things
up by letting the dialer change the files. Just *displaying* them is
no problem though, most of them can be retrieved by simple kernel- or
library-calls.

If anybody feels like writing Connexion2 (or something similar), they
can have the Connexion-sources if they want to. They're ugly, but what
can you expect from one of my first C-programs and my very first
GEM-application that use a window :-)

BTW does anybody actually *use* Connexion? I know of two other people
apart from myself, hardly worth spending time improving it then :-)

> Next, we'll need a better installation script that allows adding parts
> of KGMD after the basic install has been done, since the current script
> doesn't allow adding, say, GCC after the basic KGMD has been installed.

Adding stuff is generally not a problem (usually you just need to
unpack it, or run a install-script), *removing* is much harder ;-) I
have pieces of lots of abandoned packages scattered around my FS, God
knows how many megs I've wasted...


/*
** Jo Even Skarstein    http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~josk/
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