Last modification: 01/19/08 19:26
Here's some news you can use.
Although the University doesn't provide the SLIP or PPP connections necessary for home Web surfing, you can make do with a very nice freeware utility called SLIRP, a (C)SLIP/PPP emulator that compiles 'n runs on a vanilla campus UNIX Shell account. You can do everything you would expect from a standard Internet provider, except possibly for news and home page publishing (these depend on the sysadmin being Web-savvy, your results may vary). Netscape, Eudora, Telnet & Ftp all work nicely.
Note: I have gotten better performance with CSlip in the past than with PPP; less overhead, but somewhat less reliable.
So far, this technique has on three campus UNIX (Ultrix & OSF) machines: my student email accounts on Impala (now Jaguar), and a class engineering account on Obsidian. Details below. Enjoy! -djh
The following info is common to both machines:
; Dialup: (305) 284-6010 (14400 baud) , 284-6700 (28800 baud,
very busy)
; DNS1: 129.171.32.1 ; (from /etc/resolv.conf, works for Jaguar
& Obsidian)
; DNS2: 129.171.32.28
; Campus news server: News.ir.miami.edu.
This info is unique to Jaguar: (formerly Impala)
; IP: 129.171.32.10 ; as reported by telnet (fixed IP)
; SMTP server (send) ; jaguar.ir.miami.edu ; if you use Netscape
mail
; POP Account/Email address :
<username>@jaguar.ir.miami.edu.edu
; Requires slirp.popper for POP3 email : No
Click Here for some sample Jaguar
dialogs to use with Win '95.
And this info is unique to Obsidian:
; IP: 129.171.33.127 ; as reported by telnet (fixed IP)
; SMTP server (send) ; obsidian.eng.miami.edu ; if you use
Netscape mail
; POP Account/Email address :
<username>@obsidian.eng.miami.edu
; Requires slirp.popper for POP3 email : No
This info was unique to Impala: (obsolete, but a good example of using popper email)
; IP: 129.171.32.19 ; as reported by telnet (fixed IP)
; SMTP server (send) ; impala.ir.miami.edu ; if you use Netscape
mail
; POP Account (receive) : <username>@10.0.2.1 ; note
slip.popper's fake IP.
; Email address : <username>@impala.ir.miami.edu
; Requires slirp.popper for POP3 email : Yes (see below)
Getting SLIRP
ULTRIX (and other) binaries for SLIRP are available at ftp://ibc.wustl.edu/pub/slirp_bin/USE_AT_OWN_RISK/slirp.10c.ultrix4 or you can find the latest 1.0c sources at ftp://blitzen.canberra.edu.au/pub/slirp/slirp-1.0c.tar.gz with docs. If you don't know what type of machine you're on, you can check it yourself from a csh prompt:
jaguar> uname -a OSF1 jaguar.ir.miami.edu V4.0 564 alpha
obsidian> uname -a ULTRIX obsidian 4.4 0 RISC
If the binary for your machine isn't available, you'll have to build it yourself. In order to have enough space to build, you may need to decompress the archive into a subdirectory in /tmp and possibly rm -r the docs directory in order to have enough space. You can decompress the archive like so:
gzip -d slirp-1.0c.tar.z ; Rename the file from ".gz" to ".z" first tar xvf slirp-1.0c.tar
Read the README file in SLIRP to find out how to build the program. It's very straightforward. SLIRP optionally requires a configuration file in your home directory, ~/.slirprc. Start with this one:
baudrate 57600
mtu 552
mru 512
keepalive 60
Getting SLIRP.POPPER (optional)
Web-accessible email is available only if your host machine is running a POP3 mail server. Jaguar & Obsidian do, Impala didn't. You can check this yourself by telnetting into port 110 on that machine or checking /etc/Services for a line like the following:
pop3 110/tcp # using ipop3d from Pine3.93
If you don't have a POP3 server on your host machine, you need to compile a SLIRP POP3 emulator add-on called "slirp.popper" from http://www.icaen.uiowa.edu/~thieleke/slirp.popper.tar.gz. It's small enough to build in your home directory without gymnastics. Additionally, you'll need to add the following line to your ~/.slirprc file to make slirp invoke slirp.popper:
add exec <full home pathname>/bin/slirp.popper:110
Win'95 Dial-up Scripting Tool Login Script
If you're running Win '95, the following script file contains all the info you need to login to the machine of your choice from the campus terminal server and get your own SLIP connection running. All the information is here, but it does take a bit of time and some elbow grease to initially set up if you haven't been messing with Dial-Up Networking or UNIX lately.
I've done the dirty research up front, so have a ball. Substitute your own host name, account name & password as appropriate.
; University of Miami Win'95 CSLIP dialup for use with SLIRP,
; Dial-Up Networking, and the Dial-Up Scripting Tool - djh
; Files Required To Surf:
; Admin/Apptools/script/Rnaplus.inf, etc (Win'95 CD or ftp.cdrom.com)
; (Install with Add/Remove Programs - Windows Setup, Have Disk)
; ... This gives you the Dial-Up Scripting Tool & SLIP
networking support
; Latest SLIRP (to be compiled & run on UNIX, beware small
disk quotas):
; ftp://blitzen.canberra.edu.au/pub/slirp/slirp-1.0c.tar.gz
; (optional) Jeff Thieleke's "slirp.popper"
POP3 emulator for SLIRP
; http://www.icaen.uiowa.edu/~thieleke/slirp.popper.tar.gz
; This script file is for use with the Dial-Up Scripting Tool
; Jaguar.scp
proc main
delay 1
transmit "^M"
; Select Jaguar at the terminal server
waitfor "Local>"
transmit "c jaguar^M"
; Standard UNIX login at this point
waitfor "login:"
transmit "YourLoginName^M"
waitfor "password:"
transmit "YourLoginPassword^M"
; Run SLIRP (and slirp.popper) at the prompt from ~/bin. Uses CSLIP by default. -PPP is optional.
waitfor "impala>"
transmit "bin/slirp^M"
endproc