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Project: Linux  Articles
Getting on the net with WvDial
By Mayank Sarup <mayank@freeos.com>
Posted: ( 2000-10-12 12:10:03 EST by )
Getting on to the Internet meant working with chat scripts and debugging
them when things went wrong. Not very newbie friendly. WvDial is easy to
setup and a lot easier to use too.
If you wanted to get on to the net with Linux then you had to write scripts and
mess around with various files and options there. WvDial is the answer to all
all your connection problems. Connecting with WvDial is a short and pleasant
process. WvDial is an intelligent dialer so you don't have to waste your time
debugging chat scripts for various ISPs. If like me, you are on more than one
ISP, then you will appreciate this feature. In typical Linux fashion, it is a command line program but in atypical
fashion, it is rather user-friendly. With WvDial, I was on to the Internet
in 5 mins. No scripts. The username, password and phone number are all you
need.
You can get WvDial from http://www.worldvisions.ca/wvdial/. This is the
source code which you will have to compile. Compiling is a short, painless
process. make
make install ( Need to be root for this ) Most newer distributions of Linux now carry binaries of WvDial, which are
installed at setup along with the other network tools. SuSE and Red Hat
both carry WvDial. They also provide GUI frontends to WvDial. Red Hat's
tool is rp3 and SuSE's is wvdial.tcl. Both will need to be run in X and
will take you right from configuration to dial-out. Another GUI frontend to
WvDial is the cleverly titled KDE frontend KWvDial. I haven't tried this one
out. If you have then tell me. You will also need to have pppd installed along with the usual suite of
gcc and make tools. These tools should be a permanent fixture on your
hard drive anyway. WvDial should have been installed in /usr/local/bin. The first step after installing WvDial is to make the default config
file. WvDial comes with the wvdialconf, which you can use to setup a base
configuration. wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf Wvdialconf will detect your modem type and setup the init strings and
the port your modem is located on. The file /etc/wvdial.conf is the
default configuration file that WvDial looks for. WvDialconf has to be run
the first time and which point it will create a new wvdial.conf. You can
safely run it after you have added your own setting because it only
modifies the Init strings and the port to which the modem is connected.
Everything else is left untouched. Open /etc/wvdial.conf in your favourite text editor. Your default username
and password combination needs to be given. Open it in your favourite text
editor and you should see a section header titled [Dialer Defaults]. The
global options that will affect all your sections are defined here. When
WvDial starts up, this is the section that it will read first. Add the following to the section. Username = foouser
Password = password
Phone = 1734566 If you have additional numbers for your ISP, then just add another section
below this one with the other number in Phone. Each section in WvDial
inherits from the default section and also overrides it if any common fields
are found. [Dialer 56kline]
Phone = 172324 Now enter 'wvdial 56kline' at the command line and WvDial will use the
second phone number. WvDial will read the Defaults section and while
dialing, override the phone number in the default section with the new one. Similarly, you can add different login/password pairs as well as numbers for
other ISPs. Even INIT strings can be overridden this way so that even if
you need to have different modem configurations for various ISPs then you
will not have a problem. Just specify the section name on the command-line
after wvdial and WvDial will use section-specific options. e.g: [Dialer BetterISP]
Init2 = ATQ0 L0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55 +FCLASS=0
Username = foo2
Password = pass2
Phone = 193456 wvdial betterisp If additional sections are specified on the command line then wvdial will
read the first section and then override any common options with the
options from the second section and so on. Let's say that I have defined another phone number for BetterISP in a
section named BISP2. To get WvDial to call the second number for
BetterISP, I'd say wvdial BetterISP BISP2 This would read BetterISP but override the phone number by the one defined
in BISP2. There's a lot you can do this way. Be creative. I could also do the above by using the Inherit keyword in the wvdial.conf
file where I can tell a section to inherit all its settings from another.
So I could tell BISP2 to inherit settings from BetterISP instead of from
Defaults. [Dialer BISP2]
Inherit = BetterISP
Phone = 92837434 Now I can just type wvdial BISP2 and it will just grab the settings from
BetterISP. WvDial cannot be run non-root but it can be set suid root so that regular
users can also access it. This is not the recommended method of access to
wvdial, but it's the easiest and quickest way. chmod u+s /usr/local/wvdial Now get a list of DNS servers from your ISP and add them to /etc/resolv.conf. nameserver 123.456.789.100
nameserver 201.202.203.204 Additional DNS servers can be added in the same way on new lines. Now just type wvdial at the command prompt and it will start dialing your
default section. Barring any configuration hassles, you will be on the
Internet soon.
WvDial Home Page
WvDial FAQ
KWvDial
Other articles by Mayank Sarup
Current Rating: [ 5.83 / 10 ]
Number of Times Rated: [ 12 ]
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