3.5.3 `/etc/rc.local'

Besides starting local daemons, `/etc/rc.local' is useful for either starting pppd or slattach. In order to not block any networking-services that are also started in `/etc/rc.local', the corresponding command should occur quite early, best place is after `/etc/motd' is generated.

Configure `/etc/hostname.ppp0' or `/etc/hostname.sl0' and `/etc/mygate' as described above. Also, change the baudrate to fit your needs.

SLIP:

In order to start up SLIP at boottime, insert the following lines into `/etc/rc.local':

# Start SLIP-networking
echo -n 'Preparing SLIP-interface ... '
slattach 9600 /dev/tty00 >/dev/null 2>&1
echo -n 'ready.'

PPP:

This should work, although I've never tried it:

# Start PPP-networking
echo -n 'Preparing PPP-interface ... '
pppd /dev/tty00 9600
echo -n 'ready.'

The big problem that stays with PPP is that you've to start it up on the other side at (exactly) the same time, and there must no timeout occur in order to get a connection. Use SLIP if this is a problem.

Note that there's barely a way to dial out during boot-time, so the above mainly belongs to direct (nullmodem) connections.