DU Run Senses

It’s time to enjoy winter holidays. However, teachers will be working for another two weeks. I’d like to use the computers in the lab when I am at home. I need to create an automatic job to do this work. The job works on Linux systems (Fedora 12 and Redhat EL 5) with pppoe, sendmail, cron. Here is the steps.

1. create an ADSL account, name it as adsl

2. make a new file adsl.up,

$vi adsl.up

commands in the file as

ifup adsl
ifconfig ppp0 | mail -s IPaddress yourmail@mail.com

the 1st line is to connect ADSL with adsl profile
the 2nd line is to get the ADSL (ppp0) connection infomation and to email you

A more complicated commands, with if-then, which could avoid to email nothing or to run mail wrong if the connection is not successful.

ifup adsl
PPPSTATUS='ifconfig ppp0'
if $PPPSTATUS
then
  ifconfig ppp0 | mail -s IPaddress yourmail@mail.com
fi

3. change it mode to allow it executable

$chmod +x adsl.up

4. add the following line to the end of /etc/crontab file:

00 21 * * * user PATH/adsl.up

this line means the machine will run adsl.up at 21:00 everyday.

5. for saving the time of online, make a disconnecting file adsl.down
and make it executable

ifdown adsl

add the following line to the end of /etc/crontab file:

00 01 * * * user PATH/adsl.down

this line means the machine will run adsl.down at 01:00 everyday.

Ok, it’s alright, but the sendmail configuration need detail
1. edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc

$vi /etc/mail/sendmail.mc

find the following line

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl

and change 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0, 0.0.0.0 means to find the domain on the internet.

2. Senmail SMTP authorizing

$vi /etc/mail/sendmail.mc

find the lines

dnl TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`EXTERNAL DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl
dnl define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS’, `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl

delete the dnl in the begining of the lines, since dnl means comment this line in sendmail configuration file. Deleting it can make the line work.

3. add adequate nameservers

$vi  /etc/resolv.conf

add 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your nameservers

    ; generated by /sbin/dhclient-script
    nameserver 8.8.8.8
    nameserver 8.8.4.4

4. restart the sendmail service

$service sendmail restart

Finally, it works. I can use the lab computers in the winter holidays.