A few years ago, I had a NetBSD box using PPP with a local
provider.  Everything was hoopy.  After bouts with virus-checkers
and becoming fed up with the Evil Empire, my mother was finally
willing to try NetBSD on a computer.  The installer is friendly
enough that I thought I'd set it up with her at her place so that
she'd have some idea of what went into it.

One of the problems I ran into was getting PPP to work.  I had
some files that I had used in the past, but they did not work
this evening.  After much struggling, I've temporarily given
up.

The situation is weird, though, and short of speaking to the
ISP on Monday or setting up a nullmodem cable to capture
what the Evil Empire box does, I'm not sure what's up.  I'll
bring a nullmodem over to her place tomorrow or Sunday
and try again.

In the meantime, I thought that I'd ask for any insight.

Here's what happens over a tip(1) session:

(me   ): atd <number>
(modem): CONNECT <rate/mode/etc)
(modem): login:
(me   ): <account name>
(modem): Password:
(me   ): <password>
(modem): Invalid UserID/Password.
(modem): login
 [...repeat until I or the remote hang up in disgust...]


The number is correct.  It gets a modem to answer
and a connection.  Besides, she still has an Evil Empire
box that connects to the same provider using the same
number.

The user name is echoed back and is the same as on her
Evil Empire box for the dial-up networking account.

The password is not echoed back.  However, I have created
a temporary dial-up account on her Evil Empire box and
used it for connecting to the ISP.  I am sure that I
have the right password, and I've tried many times so
I doubt that this can be chalked up to typos.

Does anyone know if the Evil Empire does something
weird for logins?  Maybe a special control character
or something?


For automated login, I was using a chat(1) script,
which is supposed to log all transactions.  It runs
and dials, but does not log anything except the initial
"opening log file" and the terminating "closing log file".
It does not even log the dial init/dial commands used to
connect.


So there are two problems: The chat(1) command does not
seem to be logging things as I would expect, and the
ISP does not permit a standard login though I am presented
with a "login:" and "Password:" pair of prompts.  The account
is still valid and the Evil Empire box can login to the
account and use PPP.

I have also had this work with at least 1 dial-up ISP and
a similar setup with PPPoE for dynamic IP DSL in the past.
(But the manual login via tip(1) especially confounds me.)


Does this sound familiar to anyone?  Any hints before I
bring a nullmodem cable over to learn more?


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/