PON(1)

👑 PON(1) — Debian PPPD, bestie edition 💅

okay so this is the manual for pon, poff and plog — the three little scripts that let you start up, shut down, or peek at the log of your PPP connections. yes THAT ppp. the dial-up icon of the internet. she's giving vintage but she WORKS. 🎀

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pon [ isp-name [ options ] ]
poff [ -r ] [ -d ] [ -c ] [ -a ] [ -h ] [ isp-name ]
plog [ arguments ]

---

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so like. this page is all about the pon, plog and poff scripts, which let regular users (yes, users!!) control PPP connections. main character utilities fr fr. 🌸

🦋 pon

pon, when you invoke it with literally no arguments, runs the /etc/ppp/ppp_on_boot file — but ONLY if it exists and is executable. if it's not there (or not executable), it just starts a PPP connection using the configuration from /etc/ppp/peers/provider. that's the default behaviour unless you hand it an isp-name argument. slay.

for instance, to use ISP configuration "myisp" run:

pon myisp

pon will then use the options file /etc/ppp/peers/myisp. and bestie, you can pass additional pppd options after the ISP name too — extra toppings, no charge. 🍓 and the iconic part: pon can be used to run multiple, simultaneous PPP connections. multitasking queen.

pon takes the following command line options:

• -q, --quick — disconnect when ip-up finishes running. this function is only available to the root user. 💀 (sorry babes, root only)

🌈 poff

poff closes a PPP connection. if more than one PPP connection exists, the one named in the argument to poff will be killed, e.g.

poff myprovider2

will terminate the connection to myprovider2, and leave the PPP connections to e.g. "myprovider1" or "myprovider3" up and running. surgical. precise. iconic. ✨

poff takes the following command line options:

• -r — causes the connection to be redialed after it is dropped.
• -d — toggles the state of pppd's debug option.
• -c — causes pppd(8) to renegotiate compression.
• -a — stops all running ppp connections. if the argument isp-name is given it will be ignored. (not me ignoring your input 💀)
• -h — displays help information.
• -v — prints the version and exits.

if no argument is given, poff will stop or signal pppd if and only if there is exactly one running. if more than one connection is active, it will exit with an error code of 1. so like, know your audience. 🙈

🧚 plog

plog shows you the last few lines of /var/log/ppp.log. if that file doesn't exist, it shows you the last few lines of your /var/log/syslog file instead — but excluding the lines not generated by pppd. this script makes use of the tail(1) command, so arguments that can be passed to tail(1) can also be passed to plog. iykyk. 💜

Note: the plog script can only be used by root or another system administrator in group "adm", due to security reasons. also, to have all pppd-generated information in one logfile that plog can show, you need the following line in your /etc/syslog.conf file:

local2.*       -/var/log/ppp.log

---

🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/ppp/options — PPPd system options file.
• /etc/ppp/pap-secrets — System PAP passwords file.
• /etc/ppp/chap-secrets — System CHAP passwords file.
• /etc/ppp/peers/ — directory holding the peer options files. the default file is called provider.
• /etc/chatscripts/provider — the chat script invoked from the default /etc/ppp/peers/provider.
• /var/log/ppp.log — the default PPP log file.

---

👑 AUTHORS 👑

the p-commands were written by Christoph Lameter <clameter@debian.org>. updated and revised by Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>. this manual was written by Othmar Pasteka <othmar@tron.at>. modified by Rob Levin <lilo@openprojects.net>, with some extensions taken from the old p-commands manual written by John Hasler <jhasler@debian.org>. the whole squad ate. 🫶

---

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

pppd(8), chat(8), tail(1).

---

and that's the whole vibe, bestie — brought to you by the Debian Project, dated July 2000, filed under PON(1). go forth and dial up something beautiful. 💖✨🦋