security is pointless in this case i think. everybody on the local side should be able to dial-up, it's impossible if you're not already dialed up for someone from the outside to tell it to dail-up....

untested, but i would probably just try something like:

# /etc/services
dialup   12345/tcp     # dialup
dialdown 12346/tcp     # dialdown

# /etc/inetd.conf
dialup stream tcp nowait username /etc/init.d/dialup start
dialdown stream tcp nowait username /etc/init.d/dialup stop
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then if you add the services to the client machines you can just 'telnet server dialup' to start the connection and 'telnet server dialdown' to stop it.

for more perlish solution look at Net::Server or maybe the RPC or SOAP

it's also likely that you could configure the dialup server to automagically dial on demand. and not have to bother with anything else.

CU
Robartes-

I would suggest that the first thing you do is to look at running an "on-demand" ppp connection. This will do the dialing for you whenever a machine on the internal network has a valid connection to the outside world. You can define your firewall rules to select which machines are allowed the connect (and even at what times).

By running your firewall machine as a gateway (i.e. with Windows clients you want the firewall to be a DHCP server) you can minimise the fiddling you need to do on the clients.

There are lots of books on doing this type of thing, and the HOWTOs are also worth reading.

If your ISP supports it you can set up your firewall machine as a DNS, mail and news server as well (in fact you can spend hours messing with it).

If you want some level of control from the clients you could, for example, set up a web server (only for the internal network of course) that uses CGI (in Perl naturally) to control the PPP connection.

You mean makes a valid request to the outside world. How can you have a connection if you're not connected ;)

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo! I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6x+5.8x. I take requests. ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

The way that I run dial-on-demand ppp it appears from the clients to be a permanent connection. The ppp daemon takes care of dialing when someone needs a connection and dropping the line when it is not busy, but this is transparent to the machines that use the gateway.

The distinction I was attempting to draw was that my firewall rules only masquerades the current "valid" systems to the outside world (which ones are valid is controlled by a Perl script naturally).

--
tune

I knew I should have mentioned something about that :) Yes, I could use SSH, but then I'm back to the whole interactive thing. I could have my script basically do an expect with ssh and login (but that kind of defeats the whole security thing), or I could have shared keys that allow them to not enter a password (I saw a good, short discussion on this topic here as I was looking for ideas). I guess I'd like for the end user to click a button and have it dial.

And yes, rsh is BAD and ssh is definately GOOD.

Newer versions of SSH can use public keys, elimating the shell interaction. Consult you SSH manpage.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

This one uses passwords:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::SSH::Perl;

my $user = "zz";
my $password = "ztest";
my $host = 'zentara.zentara.net';
my $cmd = "/usr/bin/wvdial";
my $ssh = Net::SSH::Perl->new( $host, port => 22 ,debug => 1);
$ssh->login($user,$password);
my($out) = $ssh->cmd($cmd);
print "$out\n";
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This one uses keys:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#this uses Net::SSH, instead of Net::SSH::Perl 
#and it needs the key method of authentication, 
#it won't use passwords. 
#use strict; 
#use warnings; 
use Net::SSH qw(sshopen3);

my $user = "zz";
my $host = "zentara.zentara.net";
my $cmd = "/usr/bin/wvdial";
sshopen3( "$user\@$host", *WRITER, *READER, *ERROR, "$cmd" );
my $out = <READER>;
my $error = <ERROR>;
chomp $out;
print "$out\n";
print "$error\n";
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Again, many thanks. Though I always try to do my research, it's nice to get lots of varying ideas that I never would have thought of.