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Re: Introduction, X, pppd, afterstep,




Hello, 

I will try to answer those questions, whose answers are known to me:

On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Muli B. Y. wrote:

> 1. My screen, under X, is trapezoid shaped... I mean that the base of
> the screen appears to be a lot wider than the top, which look very
> weird. Is this normal? I've tried playing with my monitor, but it
> doesn't help.

Please do not run your monitor like this for any length of time. I am an
electronics technician and I can give you a written statement, stating
that it is going to die very soon if run like this. 

If the raster geometry is ok for text, fire up X11R6 and start the
application 'xvidtune' from a shell. This will let you play with the
settings used by the X server and find something that does not distort the
screen.

You can switch resolutions at any time using CTRL-ALT-'+' and
CTRL-ALT-'-'. It is possible that only the highest resolution will distort
your raster. (note: '+' and '-' on the NUM keypad). xvidtune shuold be run
for each screen resolution that you are using. You should have 3 modes
with a normal SVGA monitor, more if you have a good monitor. 

> 2. I only manage to connect to the Internet as root. I use IBM.Net as my
> ISP, and I connect with their script (ppp-on), which you can find here:
> http://help.ibm.net/helplib/linuxp.html. When I try to connect as
> non-root, pppd (which is activated through their script) gives me the
> message: 'must be root to run pppd since it is not setuid-root'. This is
> extremely
> important to me, as I do not want to connect to the internet as root!
> I've tried of course su'ing to root, but it doesn't help!

pppd must be suid root to be able to open the serial port (common mortals
are not supposed to open serial ports, only root). There are other ways to
do this, namely by touching a public (644) file in /tmp if it does not
exist for example, and then making a link to it in your home directory. 

The modified ppp-on will check for this file every second or so and start
the connection when you make the file. Some locking is required on the
file in /tmp to accomodate multiple users (there is a race if one user is
about to delete the file and you try to link to it after checking - a
simple solution is to try to touch again if the link operation fails). The
file created in /tmp should have the same name for all the users (ex. 
name:  'ppp_connect_request'). 

> 3. When I try to disconnect, with the following script:
> 	DEVICE=ppp0
> 
> 	if [ -r /var/run/$DEVICE.pid ]; then
> 	 kill -INT 'cat /var/run/$DEVICE.pid'
> 	fi              
> I get the error 'kill: No such pid cat /var/run/DEVICE$.pid'
> What is the problem? I know no shell scripting, and would appreciate any
> pointers to HOWTOs or tutorials on the subject. My shell is bash, BTW.

The ibm connection script probably 'forgets' to put the pid of pppd in
that place. You can change the line with kill to:

kill -INT $(/sbin/pidof pppd)

If pidof is not in sbin, correct after running: which pidof at a terminal.
There should not be 2 copies of pppd running on a machine with 1 modem. If
there will be, then this script is not enough.

> 4. Netscape does not recognize my computer's name... How do I tell it
> host X is actually me?

Did you set the host name ? When running 'hostname' at a shell prompt you
should get it. If not, edit your system setup scripts to match.

I hope that this helps,

	Peter