I have a small LAN; two Linux boxes and two Macs. One of the Linux boxes is used as a workstation, and one is used to provide common services. The services are ppp, printing, backup, etc. I have had it working for about a year.
Now I am working on converting the Linux boxes from Red Hat to Debian. I have the workstation conversion done. I need advice on the conversion of the common services box. I have installed Debian on it, and have configured diald, but diald doesn't work (it did under Red Hat). My questions are: 1> What is the best order for installing/configuring the various deamons? Should I expect diald to work with other deamons/services not yet configured? 2> While doing the initial install of Potato, I learned of pon, the program that starts ppp. Is there some way to use pon in the connect script of diald? I see that the edits that I had to make to the connect script are entirely concerned with giving it information that I have already provided to pon. It seems to me that good sys-admin proctice should be to have these two functions working off the same database. And, in my case, pon works but diald start never activates the modem. 3> I have already learned that Debian often (always?) has a way of setting up that does not conform to the non-Debian information at various web sites. How can I identify advise/information that is specifically Debian, so that I avoid being confused by stuff that doesn't apply? 4> Back to topic 2, above: I have read and followed the README.Debian file in diald documentation. I have done the three steps indicated there, and ppp does not come up when I try to use dselect to get new packages. What am I missing? I'm sending this email from the box that I am trying to configure, so should understand that it is not entirely a basket case. Paul