The first step is to install the modem. Plug in the modem’s serial cable into a spare serial port on your computer. A phone-line should also be connected to your modem. Start Linux and log in as root. You should remain logged in as root throughout the setup process. You should also start the X Windowing system.

Fire up glint, the X interface to the Red Hat Package Manager, and check whether mgetty and PPP packages are installed. mgetty can be found in the Networking/Utilities folder and PPP in the Networking/Daemons folder.

If these packages aren’t installed on your system, mount the PC Quest CD in /mnt/cdrom. Once the CD is mounted, switch over to glint and click on the Available button. Glint should show you a list of available packages arranged in a series of folders. Double click on the Networking folder and then on the Daemons folder. Search for the PPP package, select it and click on the Install button. Glint should now install the PPP package.

Similarly, move to the Networking/Utilities folder, search for the mgetty package and install it.

Okay, now that both PPP and mgetty have been installed, the next step is to configure the two packages. Let’s start with mgetty first. Mgetty is a replacement for the standard Unix getty, capable of handling serial connections. The getty process is responsible for the login prompt and getting the login name from the user. Open up the /etc/inittab file in your favorite text editor and add

V1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -s 115200 ttyS0

at the end. When Linux starts, the init process goes through this file, looking for processes to execute. The option 2345 tells init to run the mgetty process in the multi-user run levels 2, 3, 4, and 5. The respawn option allows mgetty to restart every time it terminates.

Let’s examine the parameters given to mgetty itself. The parameter "-s 115200" directs mgetty to use the serial port at the highest possible speed, 11,5200 bps. Remember that this is the speed at which the computer communicates with the modem. The modem usually talks to other modems at a lower speed. The last parameter, ttyS0 should be used if your modem is connected to the serial port, COM1. If your modem is on COM2, type ttyS1 instead.

Remember that mgetty will lock the modem for its own use. If you wish to use the server for dialing out, you’ll have to terminate the mgetty process either manually or through some shell scripts.

Since we plan to use Windows Dialup Networking to connect, it makes sense to enable PAP authentication, that way users don’t have to mess with stuff like dial-in scripts.

Edit the file /etc/mgetty+sendfax/login.config, and make sure that the line with "/AutoPPP/" is uncommented, remove the # mark in front of it, and edit it so that it looks like this:

/AutoPPP/ - - /etc/ppp/ppplogin

Save the file.