NAME¶
pppctl —
PPP control program
SYNOPSIS¶
pppctl |
[-v]
[-t n]
[-p
passwd]
[host:]Port
| LocalSocket
[command
[;command]...] |
DESCRIPTION¶
This utility provides command line control of the
ppp(8)
daemon. Its primary use is to facilitate simple scripts that control a running
daemon.
The
pppctl utility is passed at least one argument, specifying
the socket on which
ppp is listening. Refer to the
‘set server’ command of
ppp for details. If the
socket contains a leading '/', it is taken as an
AF_LOCAL
socket. If it contains a colon, it is treated
as a
host:
port pair, otherwise it
is treated as a TCP port specification on the local machine (127.0.0.1). Both
the
host and
port may be specified
numerically if you wish to avoid a DNS lookup or do not have an entry for the
given port in
/etc/services.
All remaining arguments are concatenated to form the
command(s) that will be sent to the
ppp daemon. If any semi-colon characters are found, they are
treated as
command delimiters, allowing more than one
command in a given ‘session’. For example:
pppctl 3000 set timeout 300\; show timeout
Do not forget to escape or quote the ';' as it is a special character for most
shells.
If no
command arguments are given,
pppctl enters interactive mode, where commands are read from
standard input. When reading commands, the
editline(3)
library is used, allowing command-line editing (with
editrc(5) defining editing behaviour). The history size
defaults to
20 lines.
The following command line options are available:
- -v
- Display all data sent to and received from the
ppp daemon. Normally, pppctl displays
only non-prompt lines received. This option is ignored in interactive
mode.
- -t
n
- Use a timeout of n instead of the
default 2 seconds when connecting. This may be required if you wish to
control a daemon over a slow (or even a dialup) link.
- -p
passwd
- Specify the password required by the ppp
daemon. If this switch is not used, pppctl will prompt
for a password once it has successfully connected to
ppp.
ENVIRONMENT¶
The following environment variables are understood by
pppctl
when in interactive mode:
EL_SIZE
- The number of history lines. The default is 20.
EL_EDITOR
- The edit mode. Only values of "emacs" and
"vi" are accepted. Other values are silently ignored. This
environment variable will override the bind -v and
bind -e commands in
~/.editrc.
EXAMPLES¶
If you run
ppp in
-auto mode,
pppctl can be used to automate many frequent tasks (you can
actually control
ppp in any mode except interactive mode).
Use of the
-p option is discouraged (even in scripts that
are not readable by others) as a
ps(1) listing may reveal
your secret.
The best way to allow easy, secure
pppctl access is to create
a local server socket in
/etc/ppp/ppp.conf (in the correct
section) like this:
set server /var/run/internet "" 0177
This will instruct
ppp to create a local domain socket, with
srw------- permissions and no password, allowing access only to the user that
invoked
ppp. Refer to the
ppp(8) man page
for further details.
You can now create some easy-access scripts. To connect to the internet:
#! /bin/sh
test $# -eq 0 && time=300 || time=$1
exec pppctl /var/run/internet set timeout $time\; dial
To disconnect:
#! /bin/sh
exec pppctl /var/run/internet set timeout 300\; close
To check if the line is up:
#! /bin/sh
pppctl -p '' -v /var/run/internet quit | grep ^PPP >/dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo Link is up
else
echo Link is down
fi
You can even make a generic script:
#! /bin/sh
exec pppctl /var/run/internet "$@"
You could also use
pppctl to control when dial-on-demand
works. Suppose you want
ppp to run all the time, but you
want to prevent dial-out between 8pm and 8am each day. However, any
connections active at 8pm should continue to remain active until they are
closed or naturally time out.
A
cron(8) entry for 8pm which runs
pppctl /var/run/internet set filter dial 0 deny 0 0
will block all further dial requests, and the corresponding 8am entry
pppctl /var/run/internet set filter dial -1
will allow them again.
SEE ALSO¶
ps(1),
editline(3),
editrc(5),
services(5),
ppp(8)
HISTORY¶
The
pppctl utility first appeared in
FreeBSD
2.2.5.