If you have
rp3
working
perfectly, you may have little interest in exploring
wvdial
. However, in that case, you apparently
don’t realize that you’re already
using wvdial
. As it happens,
rp3
is merely a
GUI façade that overlays wvdial
, which
does the real work of establishing PPP connections. Here are three
reasons you should consider learning more about
wvdial
:
You can use wvdial
even if X isn’t working or isn’t installed.
You can use knowledge of wvdial
to work around some problems and bugs
affecting rp3
.
You can use wvdial
in shell scripts of your own design. Chapter 13 includes an example script.
The
most salient aspects of the relationship between
rp3
and
wvdial
are that
rp3-config
maintains the
wvdial
configuration file, /etc/wvdial.conf
,
and that rp3
establishes Internet connections described by that file.
To configure wvdial
, become the root user and
issue the following command:
wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf
This command analyzes your system and creates a template
configuration file, /etc/wvdial.conf
. You must
edit this file to specify the username and password your ISP expects.
Running wvdialconf
overwrites any configuration
information stored by rp3-config
; you should
copy the /etc/wvdial.conf
file or make a note of
its contents before running wvdialconf
.
The contents of the template file look something like this:
[Dialer Defaults] Modem = /dev/ttyS1 Baud = 115200 Init1 = ATZ Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55 +FCLASS=0 ; Phone = <Target Phone Number> ; Username = <Your Login Name> ; Password = <Your Password>
Edit the last three lines of the file, deleting the leading semicolon and space and substituting the proper phone number, username, and password required to connect to your ISP. When you’re done, your file should look something like this:
[Dialer Defaults] Modem = /dev/ttyS1 Baud = 115200 Init1 = ATZ Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 Phone = 15625551100 Username = bill100 Password = donttell
Now, you’re ready to make a connection by issuing the following command:
wvdial &
The command generates quite a bit of output,
which makes further use of this virtual terminal distracting. The
simplest solution is to switch to another virtual terminal by
pressing Alt-
n
,
where n
stands for the virtual terminal (17).
Alternatively, you can direct the output of the command to a file, by
typing this command in place of the one given earlier:
wvdial 2>/tmp/wvdial.messages &
Of course, you’ll need to consult the file if something goes
wrong with wvdial. Do so by using
the less
command:
less /tmp/wvdial.messages
Once your connection is up, you can browse the Web and access other Internet services, as described later in this chapter. For now, simply verify that your connection is working by issuing the command:
ping www.redhat.com
The ping
command should report that echo packets
were successfully received from the server. If not, check your name
server configuration and other details, as described in the preceding
section.
When you want to terminate the Internet connection, issue the command:
killall wvdial
If you prefer, you can use rp3
to establish and
terminate the Internet connection. When you build the
/etc/wvdial.conf
file by using
rp3-config
, the file contains more sophisticated
entries than those generated by wvdialconf
.
However, the simpler entries are sufficient to enable
rp3
to establish an Internet connection.