Introduction
Red Hat’s netcfg program can also be used to configure dial-up networking for a modem. It can be a little tricky because it assumes your modem works in Linux and you have found the proper COM port for your modem. Other than that, it is easy to configure. Once it is configured, you can connect and disconnect from your ISP with two easy commands – no gui or X Windows required!
Configuration
- Start netcfg as root.
- Click on the Interfaces tab.
- Click Add and choose PPP for the Interface Type.
- Enter the phone number of your ISP, click Use PAP authenication, and enter username and password. Click Done.
- Click Save when asked if you want to save. Your ppp0 interface should now appear in the main netcfg window.
- After completing these steps your connection is set for a dynamic IP address from your ISP, to restart upon disconnect, and to automatically make your ppp connection the default route. It also assumes you have a symbolic link from /dev/modem to /dev/ttyS* where * is the COM port number – 1 for your modem. In other words, COM1 is /dev/ttyS0 as so on.
Connecting and Disconnecting
All messages from pppd including error messages are written to /var/log/messages.
- Using the command line: ifup ppp0 to connect and ifdown ppp0 to disconnect where ppp0 is the interfaced added in netcfg.
- Using the netcfg interface: Start netcfg as root–>Interfaces–>Highlight the ppp interface (usually ppp0)–>Click Activate.
