[NTLUG:Discuss] weird problem

[Fred]

I have been fighting a maddening little problem in my Mdk9.0/KDE3 system. Seems
like several months ago I did something - who knows what it was - that screwed
up the dialer. This is weird:
1) after bootup I have to - as root - do an 'ifup ppp0' 
2) IF I DO NOT, clicking on the dialup icon (kppp) will dialup and connect, but
there is no interprocess communication between any other programs and the modem
(socket?)
3) once root does an 'ifup ppp0' and gets connected everything works ok. 
4) at that point, I do an 'ifdown ppp0'

>From that point until I reboot the system again, running kppp by any user will
work ok. I have torn this system apart and spent way too much time on this
problem, but it irritates the crap out of me.

Any ideas on where to look to fix the problem?

Another clue:  route gives a list of ip addr.... after a boot, if I run kppp
first, route returns the list plus the ip addr for the ppp interface, given by
the isp. System won't work. If I run 'ifup ppp0' as root, then from then on
route gives me something like 'ac04.dlls.eli.n' instead of the ppp0 ip address.
Maybe that is a red herring, as it indicates to me that the interprocess
communication is now working and getting info from the isp. Maybe.

Thanks in advance,
Fred

ps - I have set up 3 other identical systems and none of them have this
problem... this one didn't either, at first....

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