Very Computer

1. ppp upgrade & ppp over minicom

OK, some people may ask why I use ppp over minicom. I have a lousy phone
line, and ppp over chat often fails to even connect, and if it connects,
it often gets the not 8-bit clean error. However, I found a good solution
using ppp over minicom. It connects most of the time, and PPP runs on it
quite ok. Given the bad line I have (phone companies came but problems
still persist), having a consistent 3Kbps/s connection is pretty good
actually.  Actually, I grew to like it, because together with pload, I
can see if there is really a connection instead of having to peep at
/var/log/messages on my RH 5.2 system.

I have set up a pppusers group for certain users to be able to dial
out. So, minicom, pppd, chat all were working ok.

Then I upgraded to ppp-2.3.6-1. Bad move. minicom dials out ok and
connects and I can do ordinary log in. But when in ppp mode, when
the server goes into PPP mode, minicom is supposed to run pppd on my
side. However, pppd works for root, but for pppusers, it complains that

        Apr 29 02:56:19 linus pppd[1402]: pppd 2.3.6 started by james, uid 500
        Apr 29 02:56:19 linus pppd[1402]: Failed to reopen /dev/cua0: Permission denied
        Apr 29 02:56:19 linus pppd[1402]: Exit.

However, pppd and chat get along fine, except that chat can't even
complete a connection most of the time (again due to poor line).
Hence, I still need minicom now.

So, I went to try all sorts of file permissions on /usr/bin/minicom,
/etc/ppp/minicom-ppp.login (my minicom login script to fire up ppp),
/etc/ppp/minicom-ppp.options (ppp options file), /dev/modem, /dev/cua0
(where my ext. modem is connected), but still no change. I don't know
what else to try.

There isn't much in the PPP-over-minicom  howto file (it was also
old... 1996).

the file permissions are as follows:

$ ls -l /usr/sbin/pppd /usr/bin/minicom /etc/ppp/minicom-ppp.login /etc/ppp/minicom-ppp.options /dev/modem /dev/cua0
crwxrwxrwx   1 root     pppusers   5,  64 Apr 29 03:30 /dev/cua0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     pppusers        4 Apr 11 19:44 /dev/modem -> cua0
-rwxr-x---   1 root     pppusers      689 Apr 29 01:41 /etc/ppp/minicom-ppp.login
-rwxr-x---   1 root     pppusers     5909 Apr 29 02:00 /etc/ppp/minicom-ppp.options
-rwsr-x---   1 root     pppusers   153436 Oct  1  1998 /usr/bin/minicom
-rwsr-x---   1 root     pppusers   116304 Mar 11 15:33 /usr/sbin/pppd

The pertinent line inside minicom-ppp.login calling pppd is

        ! /usr/sbin/pppd  file /etc/ppp/minicom-ppp.options

I don't want to set pppd and minicom to world executable, otherwise
that will defeat the purpose of the pppusers group. But I can't figure
out why a pppuser who can suid to root is unable to open /dev/cua0,
even I set the permission for all to read and write?

Any ideas is greatly appreciated.

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