Arachne Wizards:
I'm still trying to link to my ISP and I (apparently) am still
getting trapped in BBS mode. The following is a message from Steve
Fox, my ISP Sysop, who has been very patient and understanding.
Right now, I think I'm trying to use PPP to link to my ISP,
but Steve suggests "PAP", "CHAP" and "MS-CHAP". Can any of you
tell me how I might set up Arachne to use these protocols -- that
is, assuming that PPP does not?
I'm a long-time programmer, having written mostly FORTRAN
number crunching programs (although my TIDY and INDEX programs
which processed FORTRAN programs were pretty popular, too), but
as to Internet protocols, I'm a complete novice. For example, I
can only guess at the ground rules implied in writing or updating
ARACHNE.CFG. Is there any documentation available?
Once again, I'm attaching my current ARACHNE.CFG file (with
my password changed) to this message. Help from you Wizards will
be very gratefully appreciated. I really want to get Arachne up
and running before my "drop-dead" date of February 16th.
By the way, this message, like all of my previous messages,
originates via my ISP's BBS mode.
Best Wishes to You All!
Harry.
---------- Sysop Message Follows ----------
From: IN:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Harry Murphy
Re: Login procedure?
Harry,
I know I've mentioned "PAP", "CHAP", and "MS-CHAP" several times.
These are protocols that our system understands and which it
tells every connection that it supports as soon as they connect.
If it does not receive a response, then it fails back into
offering a stream connection to the BBS. I'm truly amazed that
the Arachne dialer doesn't support these very standard and widely
proliferated protocols. Even Trumpet 3.x, which was built several
years ago, supports PAP. PAP is supported on Linux, on the Mac,
and on almost every computer out there, from laptops to
mainframes. PAP is almost as widely supported as PPP.
Did you try either of the other two dialers I found for you or
did they not support PAP/CHAP/MS-CHAP as well?
The only thing I can think of for scripting is similar to what we
used for early versions of Trumpet (prior to PAP support). For
that, we looked for a specific set of characters ("BBS:") and
then told Trumpet that it was on-line. From there, Trumpet went
into PPP mode and finished the login. Even if it doesn't support
PAP, the Arachne dialer should be at least as smart as the
Trumpet dialer for Windows 3.1. At the time, Windows was barely a
graphical shell on top of DOS, so Trumpet had to deal with the
modem and the comm ports directly, something that you'd have to
do in DOS.
Alas, I don't even have DOS on any machines here or I'd try
installing Arachne myself.
By the way, the system you're dialing into is probably the most
commonly available dial-in system for Internet use in the world.
It's a 3Com/US Robotics Total Control system. In other words, if
Arachne is looking for something specific from our system, then
it _should_ find it from the system here <g>.
--- Steve
to: IN:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc: IN:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
