XISP(1)XISP(1)NAMExisp - an X11/XForms based, user-friendly interface to pppd/chat, a
simple ISP and phone company (PTT) database manager, and a dialup costs
and usage logging/statistics tool.
SYNOPSISxisp [-bgcol #<6-digit hex color>] [-iconic]
[-isp <ISP-num>] [-autodial] [-debug] [-expert]
[-nohints] [-geometry [=][<W>{xX}<H>][{+-}<XO>{+-}<YO>]] [-pidfp
<PID file name prefix>] [XForms parameters]
DESCRIPTIONxisp implements a user-friendly interface to pppd/chat and provides
maximum feedback from the dial-in and login phases on a browser screen,
as well as a manual login terminal window. It also provides greater
versatility in interrupting a call in progress and in general enhances
the user's feeling of "what's going on", especially if she/he is not
all that well acquainted with the intricacies of system log files. Fur‐
thermore, it incorporates a mechanism to log ISP connections and calcu‐
late/store phone-call costs. It's also much nicer to look at as com‐
pared to connection scripts writing output on the terminal :) The main
application, xisp, relies on a special dialer, xispdial, which is
spawned by pppd in order to perform the dialing, and a "bare bones"
terminal interface, xispterm.
The other facility provided by xisp is that of maintaining two small
data bases, one for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and one for phone
companies (PTTs). The implementation supports a variable number of
records for both data bases. Each ISP entry, aside from user account
name and password, has space for 8 telephone numbers, two dialing
parameters determining number of dialing tries and inter-dialing delay,
sixteen user customizable script lines for the chat program, and a
wealth of dialing and pppd options to cover most communication needs.
All ISP data base information is saved in the xisp resource control
file .xisprc in the user's home directory. The phone company database
supports all (known) PTT attributes applicable while logging phone-call
costs, and saves its information in a separate file, in sub directory
.xisplogs, in the user's home directory.
For a brief presentation on the operation of xisp and in particular on
the parameters available from within its "Options" and "Logging" menu
options, invoke item "General" from within the "Help" menu. For a gen‐
eral discussion on the workings of xisp, its dialer xispdial and its
helper terminal program xispterm, as well as their interaction with
pppd and chat, see the "ARCHITECTURE" section in file README of the
xisp distribution.
OPTIONSxisp accepts all of the standard XForms command line options along with
the additional options listed below:
-bgcol #<6-digit hex color>
Enables changing the default background color for all program
windows, and also the background color used by xispdial. The
desired color is entered as a six-digit hexadecimal number, 2
digits for each one of the three basic colors, red green and
blue. Remember to escape the '#' character from the shell (e.g.
"xisp -bgcol '#495563'" or "xisp -bgcol .TP 8 -iconic
Instructs the window manager to start up xisp iconized.
-isp <ISP-num>
Selects the ISP entry specified by the number entered. Valid
numbers range from 1 to the maximum number of ISP's supported
(currently equal to 8).
-autodial
Immediately after startup, forces automatic dialing of the
selected ISP entry. If the ISP selected already has automatic
dialing upon startup enabled, then this option has no effect.
-debug
Switches on maximum PPP debugging, by increasing the pppd debug
level and setting the kernel debugging option to 7, i.e. full
debugging. It does that by instructing xisp to call pppd with
the "debug kdebug 7" options added to its command line. Read
the pppd(8) manual page for details on the types of debugging
information written in the system log files.
-expert
Turns off all program confirmation dialogues. By default, all
such dialogues are enabled. This option implies "-nohints".
-nohints
Turns off all popup hints. These contain valuable information
for novice users and are enabled by default.
-geometry [=][<W>{xX}<H>][{+-}<XO>{+-}<YO>]
Instructs the window manager to adjust the size of the xisp
window and to place it at the location specified. W denotes
width, H height, XO x-offset and YO y-offset. The syntax for
this geometry string is the standard one used by all X11 appli‐
cations.
-pidfp <file name prefix>
Specifies the file name prefix for pppd's PID file. This option
is currently needed only for the PPP package distributed from
Sun Microsystems for use with Solaris (derived from the
ppp-2.4.0 release); in such case invoke xisp as: "xisp -pidfp
sppp".
The most commonly employed XForms command line options are also listed
below for the user's convenience:
-name <appname>
Changes the application name. Useful for managing resources.
-display <host:dpy>
Specifies the display server. The default value is that con‐
tained in the $DISPLAY environment variable.
-private
Forces xisp to use a private colormap.
-shared
Forces xisp to use a shared colormap.
-stdcmap
Forces xisp to use the standard colormap.
SIGNALS
The following signals have the specified effect when sent to the xisp
process using the kill(1) command:
SIGINT, SIGTERM
The xisp process is terminated and the PPP link is disconnected.
SIGUSR1
If xisp is in the disconnected state, sending it this signal is
equivalent to pressing the "Connect" button. If xisp is either
dialing or in the connected state, this signal has no effect.
SIGUSR2
If xisp is dialing, sending it this signal is equivalent to
pressing the "Interrupt" button, and if xisp is in the connected
state, it is equivalent to pressing "Disconnect". If xisp is in
the disconnected state, this signal has no effect.
The xisp process id number is saved in file $HOME/.xisprc (see section
FILES below).
FILES
/etc/ppp/options.xisp
Special options file for pppd daemon version 2.2.x. It is not
installed by default as of version 1.8 of xisp. It can be used
to pass pppd any extra options not supported via xisp's GUI
forms. This works with pppd version 2.2.x only.
/etc/ppp/peers/xisp_dialer
pppd 2.3.x peer information file used to set the path to xisp‐
dial, xisp's dedicated dialer application. Used by all
/etc/ppp/peers/xisp_<device> peer files.
/etc/ppp/peers/xisp_<device>
pppd 2.3.x peer information file used for specifying the
"noauth" option needed by most (if not all) ISPs, together with
the serial device for which "noauth" holds. This is because set‐
ting "noauth" turns the modem device file specification into a
privileged option. All such peer files contain a "call
xisp_dialer" option, which reads in /etc/ppp/peers/xisp_dialer
for setting the path to xispdial, xisp's dedicated dialer appli‐
cation.
/usr/sbin/xispdial
The special dialer program invoked by pppd as instructed by
xisp. Employs chat(8) to converse with the modem and if manual
login is selected, launches xispterm enabling the user to login
manually.
/usr/sbin/xispterm
A "bare bones" terminal emulation program invoked by xispdial as
a manual login terminal window.
/usr/bin/xisprccv
Utility program for converting .xisprc files of all older ver‐
sions to the latest format. Understands database formats of ver‐
sion 1.2 and later.
/usr/bin/xispid
Utility program for retrieving the real group id of the calling
process. Adapted from the GNU id(1) utility for use with xisp.
Used in ip-up and ip-down to screen users with permission to
start pppd. For an example of its use read the sample ip-up and
ip-down files included in the xisp distribution.
$HOME/.xisprc
$HOME/.xisprc.<hostname>
Resource control file where xisp saves all its database informa‐
tion. Plaintext passwords entered via xisp, are encrypted
before being stored in this file. If .xisprc.<hostname> exists,
it overrides the generic .xisprc file.
$HOME/.xispscript
Temporary file created by xisp and used by xispdial during the
connection phase. This file contains the plaintext password if
automatic login via the login script is selected, but is created
u+rw,go-rw (mode 600) and remains on the filesystem only for
that limited amount of time required for connection.
$HOME/.xisppap
Temporary file created by xisp and used by pppd, when PAP login
is selected. It contains the plaintext user account name and
password, and is passed to pppd via the +ua command line option.
It is created u+rw,go-rw (mode 600) and remains on the filesys‐
tem only for the short amount of time required for pppd to parse
its command line and spawn a copy of itself in the background.
Chances are that unless you have a very heavily loaded system,
you'll never be able to see this file in your home directory by
using ls(1).
$HOME/.xisplogs
Directory under the user's home directory where the two log
files and the phone company (PTT) ASCII data base updated by
xisp are kept. It is created the first time xisp is run.
$HOME/.xisplogs/xispcost.(period-suffix)
$HOME/.xisplogs/xisplog.(period-suffix)
The two log files kept by xisp when logging is enabled. The
first one keeps track of the total on-line time (in seconds) and
the total number of units charged (or total cost if the phone
company selected charges by minute rather than in units). The
second one contains entries for all ISP connections in the log‐
ging period selected (one for when the connection was set up and
one for when it was torn down). The "period suffix" depends on
the logging period selected. For "Weekly" logging it is
".W<week-number-in-year>", for "Monthly" it is simply the abbre‐
viated month as returned by date(1), and for "Bimonthly" it is
".B<number-of-month-pair-in-year>". As an example, for date "Fri
Sep 26 17:59:39 EET DST 1997", the corresponding suffixes are
".W39", ".Sep" and ".B5", respectively.
$HOME/.xisplogs/xispPTTs
The ASCII data base file where xisp saves all the phone company
(PTT) information.
$HOME/.xisp-up, $HOME/.xisp-down
If either one of these scripts is present in the user's home
directory, it is executed when the PPP link is setup or torn
down respectively. The script output can appear in the xisp
browser window. Sample .xisp-up and .xisp-down scripts are
included in the xisp distribution.
/tmp/.xisppipe.<username>
The named pipe node through which xispdial conveys messages to
xisp. It is created u+rw,go-rw (mode 600) and is not deleted
when the user exits xisp. The same node is also used for reading
output from the ip-up, ip-down scripts (called by pppd) and
.xisp-up, .xisp-down scripts (called by xisp), when a link is
set up or torn down.
$HOME/.xisppid
This file contains the process id of the currently running xisp
instance. It can be used by scripts which control xisp via its
signal handling capabilities (details in the SIGNALS section
above). Note that if for some reason (e.g. full filesystem) xisp
fails to create this file in the user's home directory, it will
carry on without giving any indication of this problem.
NOTES
When specifying the background color remember either to escape or to
quote the leading '#'.
SEE ALSOpppd(8), chat(8).
AUTHOR
The xisp package is authored and maintained by Dimitrios P. Bouras
<dbouras@hol.gr>. For more detailed contact information please read the
README file distributed with xisp.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to the following individuals:
T.C. Zhao and Mark Overmars
For creating the exceptional Forms Library GUI. It's ease of use
helped concentrating more on the program parts doing the work
rather those dealing with the appearance of the user interface.
Excellent work guys!
Luca Maranzano <liuk@kirk.linux.it>
For putting together a packaged xisp for use with the Debian
Linux distribution.
I.Ioannou <roryt@hol.gr>
For providing an alternative FTP site for the xisp distribution,
for his very helpful feedback and suggestions on improving xisp,
and for extensive beta testing.
Peter T. Breuer <ptb@it.uc3m.es>
For his help in extensively testing xisp on a *very* loaded sys‐
tem and his contribution to the alternative pppd-PID search code.
Raphael Wegmann <wegmann@ophelia.tuwien.ac.at>
For providing the animated XPM icons and code that runs the ani‐
mation, for contributing code for the ip-up/ip-down support, and
all his great ideas on improving the functionality of xisp.
Doron Shikmoni <P85025@VM.BIU.AC.IL>
For suggesting and then spending quite a bit of time testing the
call-back feature, as well as his ideas on improving the script‐
ing capabilities of xisp.
Ximenes Zalteca <ximenes@netset.com>
For supporting the RPM source and binary packaging of xisp up to
and including version 2.3p7, for use with the Red Hat Linux dis‐
tribution (Ximenes has since stopped maintaining RPM releases of
xisp, so please refrain from contacting him on this subject).
Dave Holland <dave@zenda.demon.co.uk>
for his extensive beta testing of the I/O-driven call-back code,
and his contribution of perl code for parsing the ipparam string.
Tillmann Steinbrecher <tst@gmx.de>
for letting me use the code he developed for the pppcosts pro‐
gram, as well as the phone company information included therein.
Fabrice Bellet <Fabrice.Bellet@creatis.insa-lyon.fr>
for his extensive modifications of the cost calculation code to
cover the case of non-linear minimum charge times (in per-minute
PTT charging schemes), as well as his invaluable help (feedback
and patches) while beta-testing the PTT editor and its associated
cost calculation engine.
Johnny C. Lam <lamj@stat.cmu.edu>
for porting xisp to NetBSD and contributing his patches to the
official distribution.
Takeshi Morishima <tm@planex-usa.com>
for porting xisp to FreeBSD and contributing his patches to the
official distribution.
Peter Denison <peterd@pnd-pc.demon.co.uk>
for maintaining the RPM source and binary distributions for the
Red Hat Linux distribution.
Andrew Bettison <andrewb@zip.com.au>
for contributing bscanf.c as well as the code for passing xisp‐
dial's parameters via the process environment as opposed to using
an environment file.
For their helpful feedback, suggestions and contributions:
Luca Maranzano <liuk@linux.it>
Bogdan Bucicovschi <bogdanb@math.ohio-state.edu>
Rich Lampe <rlampe@gate.cybernex.net>
Peter T. Breuer <ptb@it.uc3m.es>
Jon Davis <jon@mast.QueensU.CA>
Steve Masticola <masticol@scr.siemens.com>
I.Ioannou <roryt@hol.gr>
Stuart Luppescu <s-luppescu@uchicago.edu>
Amos Shapira <amos@dsi.co.il>
Dan Morrison <danm@primenet.com>
Raphael Wegmann <wegmann@ophelia.tuwien.ac.at>
Jacob Spoelstra <jacob@padda.usc.edu
Richard Marchelletta <rbm@ma.ultranet.com>
Javier Ros <jros@upna.es>
Stig <stig@hackvan.com>
Daniel Whicker <heimdall@mail.utexas.edu>
Charles Herman <cherman@acm.org>
Doron Shikmoni <P85025@VM.BIU.AC.IL>
Tom Hutchison <tomhutch@oregontrail.net>
Nik. I. Mouratidis <praeto@math.auth.gr>
Dave Hoo <dhoo@flash.net>
Stephan Hegel <ea273@fen.baynet.de>
Geoffrey Leach <geoffrey@iname.com>
Ximenes Zalteca <ximenes@netset.com>
Dave Holland <dave@zenda.demon.co.uk>
Henning Schmiedehausen <henning@forge.franken.de>
Jim Searle <jims@broadcom.com>
Kimball Anderson <crutch@aci.net>
John Alonzo Breen <jabberwock82@worldnet.att.net>
Martin Bialasinski <martinb@debian.org>
Oleg Mercader <merol@aliga.cesca.es>
Col Mackrory <mackrory@acay.com.au>
Paul Colclough <squiz@squiz.clara.net>
Andrea Carpani <ancarpan@studenti.to.it>
Hans-Dieter Stich <hdstich@connectu.ulm.circular.de>
Rene Fertig <rene.fertig@wupperonline.de>
Matt Ettus <mne@cmu.edu>
Navindra Umanee <navindra@cs.mcgill.ca>
Ivo Naninck <inaninck@solair1.inter.NL.net>
Reverend Jeremy Scott Dean <seregmcw@usa.net>
Oliver Schulze <oliver@pla.net.py>
Gasper Fele <gasper.fele@guest.arnes.si>
Miguel Cruz <mnc@diana.law.yale.edu>
TonyK Lindstrom <tonyk@pulpuri.pp.fi>
Toni Bilic <tbilic@efos.hr>
Tom Herzog <tom_herzog@MENTORG.COM>
Victor Karpovich <victor@cport.com>
Fabrice Bellet <Fabrice.Bellet@imag.fr>
Mark J. Hewitt <mjh@elsabio.demon.co.uk>
John Merritt <merritt@raindrop1.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Lew Ewl <hilroy@capescott.net>
Tessa Lau <tlau@cs.washington.edu>
Andy Rabagliati <andyr@wizzy.com>
Peter Denison <peterd@pnd-pc.demon.co.uk>
Jean-Francois Laforest <catworld@geocities.com>
Olav Woelfelschneider <wosch@rbg.informatik.th-darmstadt.de>
Alexander Baxevanis <noiz@usa.net>
Erlend Simonsen <erlesimo@online.no>
Alberto Caporro <a.caporro@pratesi.it>
Jim Shallman <jim_shallman@mentorg.com>
Orestis Glavas <glavas@hol.gr>
Gisbert Berger <101.206067@GermanyNet.de>
Kostas Zagoris <kzagor@rodopi.cc.duth.gr>
John Totten <john@totten.com>
Mike Bennett <mbennett@ns1.cfcc.cc.fl.us>
Peter L. Jones <pljones@earthling.net>
Robert A. Yetman <bobyetman@worldnet.att.net>
Jon Davis <ine@engineer.com>
Johnny C. Lam <lamj@stat.cmu.edu>
Wolfgang Schlueschen <Wolfgang.Schlueschen@ham‐
burg.sc.philips.com>
Nico Coetzee <nicc@mweb.co.za>
Juha 'Jippo' Pohjalainen <jmp+gate@iki.fi>
Hermann Boeken <hermann.boeken@fen.baynet.de>
Dimitris Logothetis <logos@algonet.se>
Michael Klein <mklein@murphy.ruhr.de>
Takeshi Morishima <morishim@cig.mot.com>
Peter J Arnold <pjarnold@uq.net.au>
Athanasios Kanaris <kanaris@cheng.auth.gr>
Kent Gibson <kent.gibson@iname.com>
Greg Ushomirsky <gregus@geminga.Berkeley.EDU>
Detlef Steuer <Detlef.Steuer@gmx.de>
John Caradimas <sv1cec@hol.gr>
Jason Buszta <Jason.Buszta@sequoia.panurgy.com>
Andrew Bettison <andrewb@zip.com.au>
Sundeep Mediratta <smedi@home.com>
Silviu Minut <minutsil@msu.edu>
Jari Eskelinen <jari.eskelinen@mbnet.fi>
Istv�n V�radi <ivaradi@freemail.c3.hu>
Pierre Gaufillet <gaufille@magic.fr>
Eberhard Schruefer <Eberhard.Schruefer@gmd.de>
COPYRIGHTxisp is Copyright (C) 1997-2002 Dimitrios P. Bouras
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MER‐
CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Additionally to the conditions of the GNU Public License, the following
condition also applies to xisp:
You may link this software with XForms (Copyright (C) by T.C. Zhao and
Mark Overmars) and distribute the resulting binary, under the restric‐
tions in clause 3 of the GPL, even though the resulting binary is not,
as a whole, covered by the GPL. If a derivative no longer requires
XForms, you may use the unsupplemented GPL as its license by deleting
this paragraph and therefore removing this exemption for XForms.
Linux X11 Utilities XISP(1)
