RE: howto disable auto route setup?

Fred Reimer (Fred.Reimer@eclipsys.com)
Tue, 2 Feb 1999 11:13:14 -0500

I, personally, don't understand the need for diald with the dial-on-demand
option incorporated directly in pppd since a while ago and the new ipchains
filters. Why can't you just delete the route after the ifconfig if that is
a requirement for you? If you must use diald can't you use ipchains to
redirect the traffic to a ethertap interface that diald listens to?
Something seems broken here with diald - specifically it's failure to cope
with the implementation of some of it's key features into the "base" code
(being the pppd daemon and the kernel).

Note that I don't use diald and don't know the details on how it works.
But, if it is simply a dial-on-demand daemon with filtering capabilities
that I think it is, why would anyone continue to use it when that
functionality has been incorporated into the base code? It just seems to me
that diald is not using the new features available in the newer kernel to
provide the functionality it tries to. It appears that the fundamental
structure of the diald process needs to be re-examined. For instance:

If diald needs to listen for specific types of traffic and, based on that
traffic, launch a pppd daemon and take it down when necessary

Then, it appears that the "best" way to do this may be to create an Ethertap
interface and set the default route to that interface. Have diald listen on
this interface and if it detects a packet that should cause a connection,
fire up pppd, and resend the packet through the ethertap interface to the
original destination. It can continue to forward and monitor the traffic and
take down the pppd when a timeout occurs. Does this not sound like a better
method?

Fred

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
> [mailto:owner-linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu]On Behalf Of Mike Jagdis
> Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 1999 4:40 AM
> To: Sam Mortimer
> Cc: linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
> Subject: Re: howto disable auto route setup?

> I am sorely tempted to say "bollocks" to that. It may be true in
> many cases but I doubt it is provably true in all cases and thus
> is the Wrong Thing to impose.
>
> Consider an ippp link being managed by diald (which, not entirely
> coincidentally, I have quite a few around...). The ippp interface
> must be configured and up in order for it to accept incoming calls.
> But the _routes_ must point through diald's proxy. When diald
> decides the link needs to be up it initiates the call and points
> the routes through the real interface. The proxy stays up.
>
> It isn't impossible to make diald work in an environment where
> routes magically appear whenever an interface changes in some way.
> However that isn't _always_ the right thing to do and it isn't
> necessary to do it in kernel space when everyone is already
> familiar with the need to set routes from user space after changing
> an interface.
>

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