Hi-ho folks.. pppd trivia..
What is a reliable method for telling the status of a ppp link, that is set up using the dial-on-demand functionality in pppd? The details: I've got a machine that's set to dial-on-demand, which all works fine.. When you do a pppd call xtra (The provider files are called xtra etc) it puts up ppp0, with a bogus IP address, and makes it the default gateway. When you try and access something off-site it detects the traffic going to the default gateway, and dials using wvdial.. I thought I could detect the status from the IP address of ppp0, but when it times out, it keeps the address from xtra's dhcp, even though the link is down, so grepping for the bogus IP from ifconfig is pointless. I need to be able to provide a 'link status' message via smoke and mirrors to a web page hosted for the local users. I can get the modem 'off hook' status, (Sorta) from /var/log/LCK..modem, but that still dosn't tell me if we have a good ppp link. I don't want to ping through it to check, as that will bring the link up... BTW, the machine is debian woody, and I'm using apache/php for the hosting of the webpage, but shell-script fragments, of vague incantations are fine! Cheers, Chris Hellyar.
