Hi,

I use a dial up isp and ran in to a problem caused by mail. If I manually do the dial routine the task gets done as mail doesn't seem to run until a last step before hang up. When I run it from cron, the isp kicks me out because it trys to first send mail and the isp complains that it is dev.mysettopbox.tv as a domain. That is a good thing on the isp side, but also a pain for me.

Being unable to locate where that domain information is stored, I have disabled exim4 & sendmail (put an x in front of the executables) and the dial up is now functional via cron also.

Myth seems to be running just fine with out the mail handlers however would be nice to fix it properly.

Any hints on this mail setup as maybe someday I would like to send myself a note or a motion image? I could do mail with thunderbird when I was manully connected just fine (haven't tried since the disable step) so obviously is handled differently. Browsing with lynx worked ok.

Thanks
Mike

find /etc/ -type f -exec grep dev.mysettopbox.tv "{}" ";" -ls

kicks up the files:

/etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
/etc/nxserver/users.id_dsa.pub
/etc/webmin/miniserv.conf

Mike:

I'm going to help my brother setup a mythtv box, and he also connects to his ISP via dial up. He's going to use R5D1. Would you mind posting a synopsis of how you got your machine to work via dial-up, or if there's already a write-up on how to do this, can you point me at it? Thanks!

Marc

It would seem that one easy way, if he had a LAN, would be to use ICS (internet connection sharing) on a Windoze box. Typically, you have a Windows machine with a modem, which ICS enabled. The Myth box would point to the IP of the windows box as the internet gateway. The windows box will dial on demand, as required.

You can also do the same with some routers, like the Netgear one with a comm port. Hook it to an external modem, set the phone#, userid, pwd in the router, and it'll dial out on demand, as needed. All machines point to it as the internet gateway (naturally, as it's a router/firewall).

Obviously, you can do all this with Linux too - I'm just pointing out ways that the trick may already be accomplished, but easily overlooked. And if he's already got a LAN, and a modem on a Windows box, this saves getting another modem and running a phone line.

Hi marc.aronson,

It really isn't that difficult. I did an
apt-get install wvdial
also
apt-get install setserial #(which upgrades) but the only thing it upgrades is it's self so it is ok.
apt-get install gtkterm #good to work with the modem during basic testing.
apt-get install gedit #nice editor for writing the script you need
may as well add
apt-get install mozilla
apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird

and you run them as user mythtv

I required setserial as I needed the ttyS2 for my isa modem. My other two com ports are busy. Other wise hang a modem off of ttyS0 or 1 and then run pppconfig. It will auto scan for a modem but hang if the irq is messy. Just have to kill the pid.

#!/bin/sh
#
cd /home/mythtv
date
#echo "setserial /dev/ttyS2 irq 7" >> /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh
# need to disable printer in cmos also
route delete default
wvdial --config /home/mythtv/<your-isp>.conf &
sleep 30 #time needed for doing the hand shaking and getting ip
ntpdate -u north-america.pool.ntp.org # tweak the clock at first chance
#various scripts can go in here don't use the & or the script may exit before you expect.
#mythfilldatabase
#mozilla-thunderbird
#sh /home/mythtv/ip-grab
#sh /home/mythtv/ftp-put
#sh /home/mythtv/send-file
#lynx
#mozilla
# when the script(s) ends and you exit your app, it will sleep for a minute and then hang up restoring settings.
sleep 60
killall wvdial
#play /myth/saytime/pop.wav
sleep 5
route delete default
# make noise so I know it is done, find / -name *.wav
#play /usr/share/games/frozen-bubble/snd/applause.wav
sleep 30
#reset to the internal gatway
route add default gw 192.168.1.1
echo "Returning to normal..."

Thre are probably a dozen better ways, but it works for my needs.

Also, must be run as root in order for the script to launch the pppd

Mike

Mike, thanks for taking the time to write this up!

THornsoft, you are correct about ICS. We actually tried to set that up once for other reasons but it kept auto-dialing and tieing up his line. It seems that some machine somewhere was periodially trying to connect to the internet. Probably some dang auto-update option on some software someplace in his system.

Which router has a serial-modem option? I know that d-link used to have one of these, but I haven't seen one in a while...

Marc

Hi,

Build your own, Smoothwall is awesome http://smoothwall.org/ I have a couple of them running at work and they just run like a rock.

Also I had to kill exim4 and sendmail because of the domain name thing. I haven't tried to re-enable them since removing the dev.mysettopbox.tv to see if all works. Days are sometimes too short.

As I may have mentioned else where, I use my KM machine for about 99.9% of my internet needs, kids games, drawing, of course myth, and a couple of things I can't mention yet.

Mike

D-Link had one, and I think Netgear had one too.
Father-in-law is still using his, or I'd dig it out for you.