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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!uuneo.neosoft.com!dolphin.neosoft.com!nobody From: conrads@neosoft.com (Conrad Sabatier) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: How to keep ISP from killing ppp connection Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 17:18:26 -0500 Organization: NeoSoft, Inc. Lines: 38 Message-ID: <i7moj5.0p5.ln@dolphin.neosoft.com> References: <335CC5C4.FDEFA390@cabl.com> Reply-To: conrads@neosoft.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.27.167.69 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 To: webmaster@cabl.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39683 [ posted and mailed ] In article <335CC5C4.FDEFA390@cabl.com>, Rick Goldeck <webmaster@cabl.com> writes: > I'm paying for a dedicated dialup line from my ISP, but > they timeout ALL accounts after 15 mins. of inactivity. > > I've searched freebsd.org and the only solution found > was to repeatedly ping somewhere on the net. > > Does anyone do anything a little more elegant? I noticed > with ppp run with -auto option that Apache would cause > a dialout every so often, and sendmail may do the same? > Is there a setting to change one of these down to 15 mins. > or so just to keep the connection alive? Sure. In /etc/sysconfig, you can modify the sendmail flags. The default is to send all queued mail every thirty minutes. Only problem is: what if there's nothing in the queue? :-) > I know this effectively does the same thing as ping, but > I'm a bit obsessive... Opinions on the "right" way to use > ping for this would also be appreciated. Ping sounds like the simplest solution. Just set it up as a cron job to run, say, every ten minutes. Do specify a specific number of packets, of course (you don't want it to just ping forever!), and "quiet" mode would probably be a good idea, too, since you're not really interested in the output anyway: #ping every ten minutes, tossing final output */10 * * * * /sbin/ping -q -c 1 host > /dev/null #toss final output -- Conrad Sabatier http://www.neosoft.com/~conrads