Setting up software

After these modifications we will now install and configure the 2 packages which will be used for the uplink.

Getting and configuring PPP

Grab the ppp program by emerging it:

emerge -av ppp

For more information about using ppp for dialup connections see the Dialup Connection HOWTO at Gentoo Wiki

Now fire up your favorite text editor and point it to the file with login information:

File: /etc/ppp/pap-secrets

# Secrets for authentication using PAP
 # client        server  secret                  IP addresses
 $USER           *       "$PASS"                 *

 

Replace the $USER and $PASSWORD with your own username and password you were given by your provider. Note: The username is usually in the form of user@provider. Note: The password is quoted, probably in case you have a password with weird character.

Right, we told ppp what to use during login but it would also be nice to have the actual connection to aply this knowledge. We will fix that now.

Create a new file in /etc/ppp/peers – I’ve called mine ‘adsl’ – and paste the following in it:

File: /etc/ppp/peers/adsl

idle 0
 noauth
 user $USER
 usepeerdns
 defaultroute
 linkname adsl
 #persist
 
 pty "/usr/sbin/pptp 10.0.0.138 --nolaunchpppd --phone pc1 --sync"
 sync

 

If you experience connection problems using synchronous mode (the default in the config above) try to set asynchronous mode (don’t forget to load the async module as well!):

File: /etc/ppp/peers/adsl

idle 0
 noauth
 user $USER
 usepeerdns
 defaultroute
 linkname adsl
 
 pty "/usr/sbin/pptp 10.0.0.138 --nolaunchpppd --phone pc1"

 

In both example configurations the $USER should be replaced with your own username for the ADSL login.

On the next page we will explain what each option does.

Getting PPTP

Now we need to grab pptp as we need it for the tunnel to the modem (ppp will go through pptp to log in).

emerge -av pptpclient