Topic: Dialing attempts

[Suzanne Routley]

OK,
I am trying to stop my modem dialing, dialing and dialing again, if there is a problem with the Isp connection, although you may think this problem is unlikely it does happen, and it happened to me costing a small forture.

I had a look in the man page for diald and found there are some really good options that can be included to stop this problem from accuring eg.              
   
dial-fail-limit 5

I tryed putting the above option in the diald.conf file as directed. Which is meant to cancel dialing attempts altogether. Then I purposely changed my ISP user login name. Then I let the modem dial, and it did not work at all, I stopped the modem dialing at 10 times.

Could I please get some help with this.

Thanks,

Phil R

[Rob Thomson]

Hi,
I have this problem too, only real answer I got from the forums was to use Steven Noble's contrib ISP rpm. This worked but requires users to have admin access to connect.

Regards,
Rob

[Alejandro]

Hi!
I Would say that it would be very important to track the application that's causing e-smith's diald to start (ovbiously more than one) many windows applications and stuff, and even windows 's itself try to get connected as often as they can (why ..cause thats windows world....!) but Im assuming youre using windows clients and maybe its not true.

If you can determine the origin of the diald startup process , it would be more efective that trying to patch with Stephen Noble's excellent contribution thy I understand is intended for other purpose.

I had same problem allmost a year ago,
first I had to check all client's software and e-smith diald specific confiuration to finally get the modem work as I needed
It can be done,but it requires work.

[Kevin Manderson]

I figure the initial poster has a situation like mine. I have my clients gateways as permanent dialup connections and use the 'permanent connect mode' so there are no connections from other equipment on the internal LAN causing the diald connection.

diald works great where the connection is NOT completed (like a busy) and the timeouts are all  fine. Problem is where the ISP has disabled the account (usually non payment). diald makes the call, connects, does't authenticate and gets bounced, then starts all over again. So the timouts don't work since the connection was made. Here in Australia we pay per call connection - and it gets damn expensive real quick (25c per attempt so count on 10$+ per hour....)

In my last version of gateway I used a binary backoff delay in ifup-ppp but this doesn't work here since ifup-ppp is not executed. I have tried the redial-backoff-start and redial-backoff-limit but these don't work either.

I am considering splatting the diald facillity and reimplementing the full time connect/backoff script I have. My other option is to have ipdown.local kill diald, restart diald and have the timeout at the start of the /etc/rc.d/init.d/diald script.

[stephen]

>If you can determine the origin of the diald startup process , it would be more >efective that trying to patch with Stephen Noble's excellent contribution thy I >understand is intended for other purpose.

thank you
this is exactly the reason why i wrote the -isp rpm, to stop dialouts
i'm sure better methods can be implemented but i'm still waiting for them.

anyone can initiate a connection now, since i changed the logic of connecting

stephen

[Kevin Manderson]

Hmmm,

Just had a look at *isp code. Looks to me like itn still uses the diald mechanism. I will test it but don't think this fixes the redial/connects that occur with an authentication failure.

Good part is I figure I can edit your code to make a neat way of doing it :-}

Will see what I can do,

regards
kevin

[Suzanne Routley]

Kevin Manderson wrote:
>
> Hmmm,
>
> Just had a look at *isp code. Looks to me like itn still uses
> the diald mechanism. I will test it but don't think this
> fixes the redial/connects that occur with an authentication
> failure.
>
> Good part is I figure I can edit your code to make a neat way
> of doing it :-}
>
> Will see what I can do,
>
> regards
> kevin

Hi,

I feel at this stage I would like explain the problem again, it is NOT that diald gets triggered by something on the lan randomly, as I have and my clients have permanent connections, the problem is if for some reason the connection gets disconnected at the ISPs end for reasons such as "the client did not Pay their bill etc" in which case the e-smith server will try to connect, and try to connect, and so on and so on, and rack up a very expensive phone bill and at 25 cents per call like Keven said you can garantee $10 per Hour, and if nobody is in the office, like over the X-mas holidays. This could be financially crippling for a small business trying to save money by using the e-smith server in the first place.


OK, this is what I have tried to help with this problem

I had a look at the diald man page and noticed lots of time out options

I put the option (dial-fail-limit 3) in the diald.conf file and restarted diald, then I changed the user name to force the connection to not authenticate properly with my ISP, this did NOT work. So then I pulled the phone line out of the modem, and and let diald attempt a connection, it worked as it is ment to , by stopping diald from bringing up the link until it was restarted. Hmmm So why does this option work when there is no dial tone, but will not work with authentication problems??

Phil R

[Alejandro]

As I understand the problem, diald is working wright, "diald fail limit" only controls line troubles and you are having a loging failure, I think there is a good chance taking a look at phone.filter
and uncomment (#) inclusion of this file in diald.conf
Aditionally there is a lot of switches of diald, at diald man pages.
I will check again to find more help.
Alejandro