How to Setup your DSL PPPoE Connection To get pppoe running, you will need to fill in at least the three following pieces of information: a) your user name (given to you by your DSL provider) b) your password c) the Ethernet interface your DSL modem is connected (if you have more than one Ethernet card) To do this, follow the following steps while logged in as root: 1. Edit the file /etc/ppp/pap-secrets file, adding a line to the outbound connections sections that has the following format: username@sympatico.ca sympatico.ca password Replace "username" by the username your DSL provider gave you and "password" by your password. This assumes that your provider is Sympatico. If it is not, you will also need to replace 'sympatico.ca' by the address of your provider. (T-DSL users from Germany may want to have a look at the end of this file for hints on figuring out the username that ppp needs.) 2. In the file /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider, uncomment and edit the "user" line. Using our example of "username@sympatico.ca" the line should then look like this: user username@sympatico.ca with what follows 'user' being identical to the first part of the line you added to pap-secrets. 3. If you have more than one Ethernet card in your computer, replace the "eth0" in the /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider file by the interface your DSL modem is plugged in. 4. Now, to bring your connection up, do one of the following: a) If you want your connection to come up automatically (either for an always-on connection or if you are using demand-dialing), add the following to /etc/network/interfaces: auto myisp iface myisp inet ppp provider dsl-provider To start your pppoe connection, execute "ifup myisp". The connection will also come up automatically the next time you boot. (Note that for demand-dialing, you will need to edit the /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider file and uncomment the lines in section 2.) b) If you want to bring your connection up manually (because your DSL provider charges per minute connected), simply type "pon dsl-provider" to bring the connection up and "poff" to bring it down. In both cases, running the "plog" command, you should see in one of the lines something line "pppd[216]: Connect: ppp0 <--> eth0". which means that the connection came up successfully. ------ User-Contributed Hints and Tips - The following kernel options needs to be enabled to run pppoe: CONFIG_PPP, CONFIG_PPP_ASYNC. - The Debian pppoe program is patched to automatically bring up the Ethernet interface. - If the connection comes up without problems (i.e. no ppp errors show up when you execute the "plog" command) but no data can be send or received, check using the "route" command if there is another default route (aka gateway) when you start the connection. If so try deleting this route, by removing the corresponding "gateway" line in the /etc/network/interfaces file. You may find useful the replacedefaultroute pppd keyword. - If the usepeerdns keyword is used in /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider, once the connection is up the default pppd configuration will automatically update /etc/resolv.conf with the name server addresses provided by your ISP. - If your machine is a gateway for a LAN, the clients may have problems connecting to some sites. To avoid this problem, you need to clamp MSS size, using the "-m" option of pppoe. Example lines doing this are provided in the /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider file supplied with this package. - German T-DSL user may find the following example useful in figuring out the correct user name for ppp. (Taken from http://www.adsl4linux.de/software/tonline_rp-pppoe.html) _________________________________________________________ / \ | Anschlusskennung: 11111111111 | | T-Onlinenummer: 222222222222 | | Mitbenutzer: 0001 | | Passwort: geHeim | | | | Listing 1: /etc/ppp/pap-secrets | | | | # Secrets for authentication using PAP | | # client server secret IP addresses | | | | "111111111111222222222222#0001@t-online.de" * "geHeim" | \_________________________________________________________/ Due to the presence of a "#" character in the username, the username will need quoting in the dsl-provider file, like this: user "111111111111222222222222#0001@t-online.de" - RFC 2516 paragraph 7 mandates that the following options MUST NOT be requested and MUST be rejected if requested by the peer: - Field Check Sequence (FCS) Alternatives - Address-and-Control-Field-Compression (ACFC) - Asynchronous-Control-Character-Map (ACCM) The first option is not implemented by pppd, the others are disabled with the keywords noaccomp and default-asyncmap in /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider. Removing them (especially default-asyncmap) may break your connection. The use of default-asyncmap will not cause a connection slowdown because even if the default asyncmap is FFFFFFFF, it can be used only with ttys. -- Christian Hudon , Tue Sep 16 14:08:08 2003