Книга: Linux Network Administrator Guide, Second Edition

PPP Server

PPP Server

Running pppd as a server is just a matter of configuring a serial tty device to invoke pppd with appropriate options when an incoming data call has been received. One way to do this is to create a special account, say ppp, and give it a script or program as a login shell that invokes pppd with these options. Alternatively, if you intend to support PAP or CHAP authentication, you can use the mgetty program to support your modem and exploit its "/AutoPPP/" feature.

To build a server using the login method, you add a line similar to the following to your /etc/passwd file:[58]

ppp:x:500:200:Public PPP Account:/tmp:/etc/ppp/ppplogin

If your system supports shadow passwords, you also need to add an entry to the /etc/shadow file:

ppp:!:10913:0:99999:7:::

Of course, the UID and GID you use depends on which user you wish to own the connection, and how you've created it. You also have to set the password for the mentioned account using the passwd command.

The ppplogin script might look like this:

#!/bin/sh
# ppplogin - script to fire up pppd on login
mesg n
stty -echo
exec pppd -detach silent modem crtscts

The mesg command disables other users from writing to the tty by using, for instance, the write command. The stty command turns off character echoing. This command is necessary; otherwise, everything the peer sends would be echoed back to it. The most important pppd option given is -detach because it prevents pppd from detaching from the controlling tty. If we didn't specify this option, it would go to the background, making the shell script exit. This in turn would cause the serial line to hang up and the connection to be dropped. The silent option causes pppd to wait until it receives a packet from the calling system before it starts sending. This option prevents transmit timeouts from occurring when the calling system is slow in firing up its PPP client. The modem option makes pppd drive the modem control lines of the serial port. You should always turn this option on when using pppd with a modem. The crtscts option turns on hardware handshake.

Besides these options, you might want to force some sort of authentication, for example, by specifying auth on pppd 's command line or in the global options file. The manual page also discusses more specific options for turning individual authentication protocols on and off.

If you wish to use mgetty, all you need to do is configure mgetty to support the serial device your modem is connected to (see "Configuring the mgetty Daemon" for details), configure pppd for either PAP or CHAP authentication with appropriate options in its options file, and finally, add a section similar to the following to your /etc/mgetty/login.config file:

# Configure mgetty to automatically detect incoming PPP calls and invoke
# the pppd daemon to handle the connection.
#
/AutoPPP/ - ppp /usr/sbin/pppd auth -chap +pap login

The first field is a special piece of magic used to detect that an incoming call is a PPP one. You must not change the case of this string; it is case sensitive. The third column is the username that appears in who listings when someone has logged in. The rest of the line is the command to invoke. In our example, we've ensured that PAP authentication is required, disabled CHAP, and specified that the system passwd file should be used for authenticating users. This is probably similar to what you'll want. Remember, you can specify the options in the options file or on the command line if you prefer.

Here is a small checklist of tasks to perform and the sequence you should perform them to get PPP dial in working on your machine. Make sure each step works before moving on to the next:

1. Configure the modem for auto-answer mode. On Hayes-compatible modems, this is performed using a command like ATS0=3. If you're going to be using the mgetty daemon, this isn't necessary.

2. Configure the serial device with a getty type of command to answer incoming calls. A commonly used getty variant is mgetty.

3. Consider authentication. Will your callers authenticate using PAP, CHAP, or system login?

4. Configure pppd as server as described in this section.

5. Consider routing. Will you need to provide a network route to callers? Routing can be performed using the ip-up script.

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