On Thu, 15 Jan 1998 tooleym@douglas.bc.ca wrote:

> [ would like pppd or chat to redial a few times before giving up ]

Pppd allows you to specify any program or shell script to be used as the
'connect' program.  It needn't be chat itself.  This is very handy for
exotic dial-in cases like SecureID (tm) and other dynamic authentication
procedures.  It also works well for special needs like yours.

I would write a shell script like this:

  #!/bin/sh
  CHAT=/usr/bin/chat
  NUMBER=18005551212
  TRYREDIAL=3
  STATUS=

  #
  # Exit codes from chat.
  #
  BUSY=4
  NOCARRIER=5

  while [ ${TRYREDIAL} -gt 0 ]; do
      ${CHAT} ABORT BUSY ABORT NO CARRIER '' '\rAT' 'OK' "ATDT$NUMBER" #etc
      STATUS=$?

      if [ ${STATUS} = 0 ]; then
          # Successful connection
          exit 0
      elif [ ${STATUS} = ${BUSY} ]; then
          REDIAL=`expr $TRYREDIAL - 1`
      elif [ ${STATUS} = ${NOCARRIER} ]; then
          exit 1	
      else
          # Some other error occurred.
          exit 1
      fi
  done
  #
  # Redial failed with busy on all attempts.
  #
  exit 1

Make this script executable and supply it as the value for the 'connect'
command line argument to pppd.  This works as a chat script because: 

 1) Under normal operation, the only stdin/stdout traffic will occur from 
    'chat' itself.
 2) It exits with a return value of 0 upon a successful connection, and 1
    otherwise.

-J