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Date:      Wed, 10 May 2000 23:32:00 +0100
From:      Ben Smithurst <ben@scientia.demon.co.uk>
To:        Darren Wyn Rees <merlin@netlink.co.uk>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ppp 'set filter' question
Message-ID:  <20000510233159.E10128@strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <20000508215244.K13317@netlink.co.uk>
References:  <20000508215244.K13317@netlink.co.uk>

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Darren Wyn Rees wrote:

> 1)  give the Windows machine a simple means to determine
> if the FreeBSD machine is online

...

> For (1) I considered configuring a simple finger client to
> finger a port on the FreeBSD machine which cat-ted a "online"
> or "offline". But I couldnt' find an MSDOS finger client ! 
> I thought a simple shortcut on the Windows desktop that opened
> an MSDOS box would suffice.  Does this sound reasonable ?
> I don't want to force users of the Windows machine to launch
> a large application to find out a tincy little bit of info.

If the users are primarily web users, how about setting their web
browser's start page to a CGI script on the FreeBSD server, which says
either "online" or "offline" (plus some useful links or whatever else
you want), or just give them the URL to that page so they can bookmark
it.  You could probably write a script to bring the link up using a CGI
script too (and stick a link to that on the aforementioned "home" page).
I know a web browser falls under the "large application" category which
you want to avoid, but if they're going to start one anyway...

OTOH, if they're not web users, just ignore me...

> For (2), I'm unsure.  I understand I can use 'set filter'.
> I've read the ppp man pages, and the 'Packet Filtering' section
> (and there was a hint on packet filtering in a sample ppp.conf
> that came with Walnut Creek CD).  I'd like to allow the 
> users of the Windows machines to dial-up by doing something
> very definite.  How do other people solve this one ?

I don't use Windows, but I have a program on the gateway "goonline"
which does what you might expect.  Of course, this requires them to ssh
over to the gateway, which is a simple as "ssh scientia" in unix, but
maybe a bit more effort in Windows than the average l^Huser can stand.

-- 
Ben Smithurst / ben@scientia.demon.co.uk / PGP: 0x99392F7D


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