Re: A 'pppctl' port for Linux, for controlling 'ppp' running on OpenBSD?

[Andrew Basterfield <bob@cemetery.homeunix.org>]

On Mon, 2 Jun 2003 05:47:07 +0000,
Beneath <ishikodzume@beneath.plus.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I recently set up OpenBSD running as my firewall/gateway.
> I need to be able to bring up and take down the PPP link that the
> OpenBSD box has to the internet, via a command from a Linux box on my
> LAN.

You could make ppp{d} suid root and owned by the dialer group, with
owner and group executable flags only. Put your user in the dialer
group. Make an ssh key with no passphrase and put the private key in
your user account on the linux box. Now you should be able to

user@linux:~$ ssh openbsd.box -c /usr/sbin/pppd call yourisp 

This is basic stuff, read the openssh documentation and google for ssh
tutorials.

> The ideal way to do this, i thought, would be to run 'ppp' on the BSD
> box, accepting TCP connections from the 'pppctl' program. However,
> search as i might, i cannot find a port of this program for linux.
> Any idea on how to do this? The command is actually going to be
> running from a Bash CGI script on the linux box, via Apache (so all
> machines can use this page to connect, even the windoze ones). I don't
> want to run a httpd on the BSD box.

I did this when I had to dialup. I have the cgi perl script still, but
it is messy (mainly I needed it to support simultaneous incoming and
outgoing connections).

> SSHing in each time to do it a decent option... unless i can automate
> this in a nice way.

Using ssh is certainly going to be easier than porting pppctl to linux.
Alternatively could write some perl for the web-server that talked to
ppp daemon directly, bypassing pppctl.

--Andrew

-- 
http://cemetery.homeunix.org

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