The
User's Manual
Appendix A: Preparations
We recommend you doing some preparations before first starting kISDN to avoid the
typical beginner's mistakes:
- Make backup copies of some files on your system
(kISDN will overwrite them without asking you)
- Make sure that ISDN was not installed on your system
before (this will cause strange errors we know from supposed bug reports)
- Check the version number of your ipppd
Whenever you start kISDN's dialup client, kisdn, 3 files will be read
and buffered and then written back with a different content to match the setup for
the chosen provider; in the best case the previously buffered files will be restored
when quitting kisdn, but there is no guarantee that the program will always
do a clean quit and thus those files may - in some bad situation - be corrupted.
The files we recommend making backup copies of are
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/ppp/pap-secrets
/etc/chap/secrets
/etc/ppp/ioptions
Yes, that's correct we're talking about 4 instead of 3 files, which depends on the
fact, whether you have providers with different authentification protocols (one
using PAP, the other using CHAP).
To easy recognize your backup files we recommend choosing the following names:
/etc/resolv.conf.bak
/etc/ppp/pap-secrets.bak
/etc/ppp/chap-secrets.bak
/etc/ppp/ioptions.bak
If one or even more of these files don't exist on your machine, don't bother:
In that case kISDN will create it/them on runtime.
ISDN already installed (kISDN was not used)
In case you already have a working ISDN setup (without using kISDN) you
most probably have some mechanism installed in your boot scripts (ISDN start/stop
scripts and the like). The dialup client kisdn will detect PPP and ISDN
interfaces at startup and you may even trigger dialout/hangup on those,
but you will not be able to use the full functionality of kISDN
with them; the reason for this is, that kISDN does not have enough
information on those interfaces. If you really need to rely on those preconfigured
interfaces (that's how we call them), please make sure the
ipppd is running, too (PPP interfaces only) since kISDN can't
start it in that case.
The most obvious reason for preconfigured interfaces is the need of a working
ISDN setup without running X, and thus we're already preparing a commandline
solution of kISDN that will cover these cases.
The actual (I didn't say most recent) version of the ipppd (i2.2.9)
is no longer using the file
but instead
is looked for. If you have a somewhat older ipppd running on your system
we recommend creation of a symbolic link, such as
since kISDN will write data to ioptions by default and your ipppd
won't find it. To get information about the version number of your ipppd, simply
start it by hand and give it an illegal option, such as
The ipppd should respond as
ipppd: unrecognized option '-h'
ipppd version i2.2 patch level 9anubis
(and you will learn about it's usage - don't bother).
Back to Contents
T. Westheider / October 17th, 1998 - kISDN Release 0.7.0