The

User's Manual

Release 0.8.0, (C) 1999

Appendix A: Preparations

We recommend some preparations before the first start of kISDN to disclude possible error sources:


Backups

Each time kISDN starts it creates three files to configure itself for the current ISP. Even though these files are buffered there is no guarantie, won't take harm due to unexpected circumstances. Thus we recommend backing up the following system files:
    /etc/resolv.conf
    /etc/ppp/pap-secrets
    /etc/chap/secrets
    /etc/ppp/ioptions
You could append .bak to their names:
    /etc/resolv.conf.bak
    /etc/ppp/pap-secrets.bak
    /etc/ppp/chap-secrets.bak
    /etc/ppp/ioptions.bak
It does not do any harm if kISDN has to create one or more of the files when they don't exist on your system.


Other ISDN installations

If you have previously used ISDN under Linux, it is likely that the boot scripts contain some ISDN configuration entries. kISDN does support these 'preconfigured devices', but the complete functionality can only be reached with accounts configured by kcmkisdn (only these accounts provide the whole set of information needed by kISDN).
If preconfigured devices cannot be avoided, it will be your task to make sure that for each syncPPP an ipppd is started automatically - kISDN cannot take care of that.
We think there is only one use of preconfigured devices that makes sense: if you wish to use ISDN without a running X server; we plan to create scripts at some point that will allow the usage of kISDN accounts even for these cases.


Version checking of ipppd

The current version of ipppd (i2.2.9) no longer uses the file
    /etc/ppp/options
but
    /etc/ppp/ioptions
Should your system be using an older version of ipppd you will have to create a symbolic link in /etc/ppp :
    ln -s ioptions options
as kISDN will write to ioptions per default; your ipppd would be unable to find the options. To find out your ipppd's version, simply call it with an illegal argument:
    ipppd -h
It should print something like:
    ipppd: unrecognized option '-h'
    ipppd version i2.2 patch level 9anubis
(and some usage details).

Back to the overview


T. Westheider, Ch. Zander / January 8 1999 - kISDN Release 0.8.0