When I installed Debian 2.0 I chose 'Dial-Up' and got the large number of useful packages included in that selection. The first time (let's not count the retries) I installed it I postponed the configuration of wvdial, not knowing what it was for, and followed the instructions in the Installation document for getting on-line with pon/poff. Life was good and just got better with the discovery of the 'dialout' and 'dip' groups and wmppp.
Then I blew up my disk playing with another O.S. that shall remain nameless since it was my fault and not its. When I re-installed Debian this time I did not defer the configuration of wvdial and was pleasantly pleased with its ease of use to establish the ppp connection I needed. I like the speed dialing especially. I really should reconfigure and save the modem setting for that ... But when I went to install and use wmppp it wouldn't dial out. Further investigation revealed that pon did not work either. I futzed about with the various configuration files for pppd, etc. with no great success, tried pppconfig with equal lack of progress. Finally I did 'dpkg --purge wvdial' and ran pppconfig again. Now pon/poff and wmppp work and I can get back to getting dial on demand working with diald. However, I am left with two questions. 1) Why did wvdial interfere with the operation of pon/wmppp? 2) Why install this package as part of the 'dialout' selection but have no mention of it in the Installation paper that details how to get online via pon? ---- Ken
