Welcome to WvDial
=================
It's amazing! It's your wildest dream come true! Dialup networking for
Linux that doesn't require chat scripts!
Okay, so maybe you're not as excited as I am, but we at Worldvisions hope
this will brighten up your week. WvDial is our attempt to make the
previously rather complicated configuration of Linux dial-up networking as
simple as phone number - username - password.
Actually we have loftier goals in mind for what we call the "Worldvisions
Weaver" project, and that's where WvDial comes from. WvDial and its
supporting libraries are the first components of the Weaver system that we
are releasing for free (under the LGPL; see below). The rest of Weaver will
probably be released for free eventually, but to maintain our competitive
edge (and also save our programmers from looking silly) we're keeping the
rest to ourselves for now. No promises about that.
But that doesn't stop you from having fun right now! WvDial is and will
remain totally free, and we hope that all Linux distributions will try to
integrate it and help make Linux (even more of) a killer Internet
workstation.
But first there is something we should tell you:
The GNU Library General Public License
======================================
WvDial was written by Dave Coombs and Avery Pennarun of Worldvisions
Computer Technology, Inc. and is released to the public under the terms of
GNU's LGPL, or Library General Public License.
This is not quite the same as the General Public License (GPL) that most
Linux software uses. The LGPL is actually *less* restrictive -- you can use
LGPL software inside your own programs, and you are *not* required to place
your program under the GPL or LGPL. That means companies or individuals
can, if they want, take all the code in WvDial and use it in a product
without giving anyone their own source code.
But there's a catch, of course -- basically, you have to make the source
code to WvDial itself available to users, and if you *change* the WvDial
code in any way, you must also release the changes under the terms of the
LGPL. That means you have to give out the source code to your changes.
That also means that we or anyone can build a product based on the modified
WvDial, and although the source code to WvDial must be provided, the rest of
the system does not have to be (L)GPL'd.
We think that this is a fair way to share this software, because it
guarantees that everyone can fix bugs and when anyone does, everyone can get
the patch. But still, people can build small Linux systems based on WvDial
(...like our Weaver) without having to give out the source code to their
*entire* main program.
Naturally none of that is legally binding. The nice people at GNU have
prepared the legalese already and you can find their license verbatim in the
file COPYING.LIB or, if you installed the Debian package,
/usr/doc/copyright/LGPL. Please read it carefully before distributing (or
worse, not distributing) modified copies of WvDial, because the rules aren't
quite as simple as I've made them sound.
Compiling and Installing WvDial
===============================
If you are not using our pre-compiled Debian package, you will need to
compile WvDial yourself. This is not too difficult as long as you have a
few things installed on your Linux system:
- pppd 2.2.0f or 2.3.5, with the pppd program preferably
at /usr/sbin/pppd.
- gcc 2.7.2 or higher, with g++ (but you don't necessarily need
libg++ or libstdc++, as WvDial doesn't need them)
- GNU make; you may need version 3.75 or higher, I'm not sure.
Almost any halfway modern Linux system should have all of these.
Building WvDial is a simple matter. First, check the Makefile to see if
everything looks okay to you. By default, wvdial and wvdialconf will
install in /usr/local/bin with their man pages in /usr/local/man/man1.
That's probably right for most systems.
To build and install WvDial, then:
make
make install
Assuming you don't have any compile errors (and really, you shouldn't,
right?) you now have an installed WvDial system.
Configuring for the First Time
==============================
Again Debian users have a nice soft fuzzy warm cushion to land on: when
installing the WvDial package, Debian's "dpkg" automatically runs wvdialconf
and asks all the right questions to get you going.
If you compiled manually, you have to go through a little bit more trouble
-- but don't worry, not that much.
The first thing to do is have wvdialconf detect your modem and create your
initial configuration. 'su' to root and type the following:
wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf
If all goes well, your modem will be detected and its configuration stored
in /etc/wvdial.conf. If it doesn't work, all is not lost but you will have
to build the configuration completely by yourself. Read the wvdial(1) man
page ("man wvdial") for more information about that.
In any case, if your modem is not detected or the detection sequence
confuses you in some way, let us know by sending an e-mail message to
wvdial@worldvisions.ca -- this is supposed to be a stable release, but
everybody knows that doesn't really mean anything. Things could still go
wrong, and we really want to know if they do. Remember, if we don't know
there's a problem, we can't fix it.
On my computer the modem detection sequence looks like this:
Scanning your serial ports for a modem.
modemscan<Info>: Ignoring ttyS0 because /dev/mouse is a link to it.
ttyS1<*1>: AT -- AT -- AT -- nothing.
ttyS2<*1>: AT -- OK
ttyS2<*1>: ATZ -- OK
ttyS2<*1>: ATQ0 -- OK
ttyS2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 -- OK
ttyS2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- OK
[more init string testing]
ttyS2<*1>: Speed 2400: AT -- OK
ttyS2<*1>: Speed 4800: AT -- OK
[more baud rate testing]
ttyS2<*1>: Speed 230400: AT -- AT
ttyS2<*1>: Max speed is 115200; using 57600 to be safe.
ttyS2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55 -- OK
Found 1 available modem; using /dev/ttyS2.
ttyS2<Info>: Speed 57600; init "ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55"
wvdialconf will scan all your /dev/ttyS* serial ports *except* the
/dev/mouse port (if you have a /dev/mouse link) because sometimes probing
the mouse port can cause mouse problems. In any case, try not to move your
mouse while wvdialconf is probing and you should be safe.
After wvdialconf runs successfully (ie., you receive a message like the one
above) it writes your configuration to /etc/wvdial.conf, the filename you
gave it on the command line. My auto-generated wvdial.conf file looks like
this:
[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyS2
Baud = 57600
Init = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55
; Phone = <Target Phone Number>
; Username = <Your Login Name>
; Password = <Your Password>
After [Dialer Defaults], the first four lines have been autodetected for
your system, so don't worry if they look a little different.
The next three lines are commented out. You need to edit the file to fill
in the information about your Internet provider. Here's a sample completed
wvdial.conf file:
[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyS2
Baud = 57600
Init = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55
Phone = 555-4242
Username = apenwarr
Password = my-password
This contains all the information needed to dial my favourite non-existent
Internet provider.
If you use more than one modem, dial-in account, Internet provider, init
string, or anything, you can use additional "override" sections in
wvdial.conf to support this. See the wvdial(1) man page for more
information. (Type "man wvdial")
Testing it for the First Time
=============================
Now you've compiled, installed, and configured WvDial. Doesn't that make
you mad at all the darn Debian users who didn't have to do any of this
stuff? Well, now you've caught up with them. Sooner or later, everyone has
to try dialing for the first time.
To do this, type
wvdial
(surprise!).
Unlike other ppp dialers you might have used, the wvdial program runs in the
foreground and never exits until you disconnect or have some kind of fatal
error. You can also quit (and disconnect the phone, and clean up politely)
by pressing CTRL-C. I think this is more user-friendly, myself. Of course
if you want it to work like pppd you can always do it in the usual way:
wvdial >/var/log/wvdial.log 2>&1 &
It is interesting to note that almost all of WvDial's functionality is found
in a C++ class called WvDialer. That means it's easy for a programmer to
take WvDial and put in whatever kind of user interface he wants. The
"wvdial" program serves as a simple example. So with WvDial, if someone
(say) wanted to write an X-Windows dialup button bar, they could simply link
in the C++ class and not have to worry about messy interactions with
self-backgrounding pppd scripts and other gruesome stuff.
Anyway, if you have any gripes about the way this works, let us know.
The more stuff you complain about, the more likely we are to do something
about it.
Assuming it Worked...
=====================
If you ran wvdial and it connected to and logged into your Internet
provider, you're in business. If it said anything strange or confusing
along the way, e-mail us anyway -- it could be the sign of a nasty problem
hiding somewhere.
Nah, it Didn't Work After All
=============================
Because WvDial has a pretty nasty bunch of heuristics included for dialing
modems, finding login/password prompts, guessing at menu options and command
prompts, and so on, it has been known to screw up on occasion. If WvDial
doesn't quite work for you, it's probably our fault, not yours! It's
difficult for us to guess typical login sequences for various ISP's, and
it's completely impossible for us to guess them all. If WvDial doesn't seem
to like your ISP, I've got some good news and some bad news for you.
The bad news about WvDial versus 'chat' scripts: if your chat script
doesn't work, you can always fix it without doing any programming. WvDial
uses built-in intelligence, but if its intelligence fails, you're out of
luck.
And now the good news: E-mail us about the problem and we'll do our best to
help. If we can do it, we want WvDial to work with nearly every ISP around,
without any special configuration.
The most useful thing you can do for us is create a complete transcript
of your wvdial session:
wvdial 2>&1 | tee wvdial.out
Then e-mail the wvdial.out file to us along with your comments. Similarly,
if the problem is during the modem detection phase (ALL modems should be
detected successfully in a working wvdialconf!) you can get a transcript
like this:
wvdialconf /dev/null 2>&1 | tee wvdialconf.out
And e-mail us wvdialconf.out.
Concluding Notes
================
WvDial has support for switching easily between multiple Internet accounts:
read the wvdial(1) man page for more information.
For that matter, it would do you well to read the wvdial(1) and
wvdialconf(1) man pages anyway.
It would be nice to see a Red Hat Linux package for wvdial. We don't use
Red Hat here so we can't do it, but anyone who wants to can go right ahead.
If you want, we'll put it on our web page along with the Debian package.
Even though this is supposed to be a stable release, there may still be bugs
in this thing. Tell us about them, every last one. Send us e-mail at:
wvdial@worldvisions.ca
Or better yet, why not send your comments to the WvDial Mailing List, at:
wvdial-list@worldvisions.ca
There is a (currently cheesy) web page for wvdial at:
http://www.worldvisions.ca/wvdial/
...have fun with it!
Remember:
It's only big and scary looking if you look too closely.
