WVDIAL(1)

💖 WVDIAL(1) 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the wvdial manual page from the General Commands Manual section of the Unix manual — and honestly? it's giving legendary dial-up energy. no cap.

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✨ NAME ✨

wvdial — PPP dialer with built-in intelligence.

(yes, "intelligence". we'll get to that. 🧠✨)

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

wvdial [ OPTIONS ] [ SECTION ] ...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So wvdial is an intelligent PPP dialer — meaning it dials a modem and starts PPP so you can connect to the Internet. Think of it like the chat(8) program, except instead of forcing you to write out a whole login script by hand, it uses heuristics to guess how to dial and log into your server. lowkey iconic of it.

When wvdial starts, the first thing it does is load its configuration from /etc/wvdial.conf and ~/.wvdialrc. Those files hold the basic info about your modem port, speed, and init string, plus the deets about your Internet Service Provider (ISP) — phone number, username, password, all of it. 💌

Then it initializes your modem, dials the server, and waits for a connection (a CONNECT string from the modem). It also understands and responds to the classic connection problems, like BUSY and NO DIALTONE. she's attentive, we love that.

Any time after connecting, wvdial will start PPP if it sees a PPP sequence from the server. If not, it tries to convince the server to start PPP by doing the following:

• responding to any login/password prompts it sees;
• interpreting “choose one of the following”-style menus;
• eventually, sending the word “ppp” (a common terminal server command).

And if all of that fails? wvdial just runs pppd(8) and hopes for the best. 😭 It'll bring up the connection, and then wait patiently for you to drop the link by pressing CTRL-C. main character patience fr fr.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

Several options are recognized by wvdial. Here's the whole menu, no skips:

• -c, --chat — Run wvdial as a chat replacement from within pppd, instead of the more normal method of having wvdial negotiate the connection and then call pppd.
• -C, --config=CONFIGFILE — Run wvdial with CONFIGFILE as the configuration file, instead of /etc/wvdial.conf. This is mainly useful only if you want per-user configurations, or you want to avoid having dial-up information (usernames, passwords, calling card numbers, etc.) sitting in a system wide configuration file.
• -n, --no-syslog — Don't output debug information to the syslog daemon (only useful together with --chat).

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wvdial is normally run without command line options, in which case it reads its configuration from the [Dialer Defaults] section of /etc/wvdial.conf. (The configuration file is described in more detail in the wvdial.conf(5) manual page. go read it, bestie. 📖)

One or more *SECTION*s of /etc/wvdial.conf may be specified on the command line. Settings in these sections will override settings in [Dialer Defaults].

For example, the command:

wvdial phone2

will read default options from the [Dialer Defaults] section, then override any or all of the options with those found in the [Dialer phone2] section.

If more than one section is specified, they are processed in the order they are given. Each section will override all the sections that came before it. (last one standing wins, that's the vibe check.)

For example, the command:

wvdial phone2 pulse shh

will read default options from the [Dialer Defaults] section, then override any or all of the options with those found in the [Dialer phone2] section, followed by the [Dialer pulse] section, and lastly the [Dialer shh] section.

Using this method, it is possible to easily configure wvdial to switch between different internet providers, modem init strings, account names, and so on without specifying the same configuration information over and over. reusing your setup? that's efficiency, that's self-care. 💖

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💀 BUGS 💀

“Intelligent” programs are frustrating when they don't work right. This version of wvdial has only minimal support for disabling or overriding its “intelligence”, with the “Stupid Mode”, “Login Prompt”, and “Password Prompt” options. So, in general, if you have a nice ISP, it will probably work, and if you have a weird ISP, it might not. 🙈

Still, it's not much good if it doesn't work for you, right? Don't be fooled by the fact that wvdial finally made it to version 1.00 — it could well contain many bugs and misfeatures. Let us know if you have problems by sending e-mail to <wvdial-list@lists.nit.ca>. 📧

You may encounter some error messages if you don't have write access to /etc/ppp/pap-secrets and /etc/ppp/chap-secrets. Unfortunately, there's really no nice way around this yet. 😭

fr fr, permissions on those secrets files are not a joke — the manpage says there's no nice workaround, so don't come for me.

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/wvdial.conf — Configuration file which contains modem, dialing, and login information. See wvdial.conf(5).
• /dev/ttyS* — Serial port devices.
• /etc/ppp/peers/wvdial — Required for correct authentication in pppd version 2.3.0 or newer.
• /etc/ppp/{pap,chap}-secrets — Contains a list of usernames and passwords used by pppd for authentication. wvdial maintains this list automatically.

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Dave Coombs and Avery Pennarun for Net Integration Technologies. We would also like to thank SuSE and RedHat for adding a number of various cool features to wvdial. Thanks guys! 🫶

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

wvdial.conf(5), wvdialconf(1), pppd(8), chat(8).

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and that's the whole page, bestie — WvDial, December 2005, WVDIAL(1). she's vintage, she's dialing, she's slaying. periodt. 💅✨