Dialup PPPD with Network Manager in F12

David bouncingcats at gmail.com
Fri Dec 4 09:10:19 UTC 2009


I'm seeking advice on the use of "plain old dialup" pppd and Network Manager.

My internet access is provided by 56kbit/s dialup modem on /dev/ttyS0
on a desktop pc which also has an ethernet NIC that gives CUPS,
backup, NFS, internet services to another notebook pc. DSL is not
available here due to poor line quality.

I currently have dialup pppd working in Fedora 9. Back then I was not
able to find a comprehensive or current Howto but I did get it working
by reading widely and manually editing these files
/etc/hosts
/etc/sysconfig/network
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/host.conf
/etc/ppp/pap-secrets
/etc/ppp/peers/my_isp (wvdial with --remotename --chat options)
/etc/ppp/options
/etc/ppp/my_chat_script
/etc/wvdial.conf

Back then I uninstalled F9 Network Manager because it seemed that it
and/or system-config-network was interfering with some of the above
files.

I now want to progress to Fedora 12. I will do a clean installation.
So I'm just asking here first to see if there is a better way than my
previous approach above.

I noticed that NetworkManager in F12 included Wireless Broadband
support, I hoped that it might also be useable for plain old dialup. I
found a reference:
http://www.linux.co.uk/docs/center/how-to/how-to-get-online-with-3g-broadband
that it looks possible to specify the modem device port somewhere in
NetworkManager. However I am unable to find anywhere to do this in F12
Network Manager Applet 0.7.996. Maybe the manual configuration option
was dropped in favour of the wizard approach.

My questions are:
I need to use pppd via /dev/ttyS0 dialup modem in Fedora 12.
1) Should I disable Network Manager ?
2) Or is there a way to have Network Manager cooperate with serial
device modem connections ?
3) Is Network Manager likely to have this capability in future ? Or is
it considered obsolete ?
4) Have I overlooked any Howto that assists with use of pppd with
serial device modems on F12 ?

Thanks
David




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