dockapps/wmisdn/README

This is wmisdn version 1.81
***************************

(if you're already familiar with wmisdn, you may want to check the CHANGES
 file instead)

What it is about and how to use it:
-----------------------------------

wmisdn is a small isdn monitor that can be docked on the WindowMaker dock,
the Afterstep Wharf or KDE2 kappdock, or used in any other window manager as a
standalone window app. It gives some information about a specified ippp 
device and lets the user control the connection.
wmisdn supports all current connection modes of an ippp device 
(as of Kernel 2.2.10)

off            - the ippp defice has no connection and dialing is disabled
offline        - the ippp device has no connection and is ready to dial
dialing        - the ippp device is trying to establish a connection

online         - the ippp device is connected to a ppp server
fax            - ippp serving fax call
voice          - ippp serving voice call
modem          - ippp working as a modem device
raw            - ippp working as a raw device

Every of the 5 connection states that indicate a connection mode has two 
modes - incoming and outgoing.

Additional information about the connection is displayed on a panel toggled
by the small horizontal arrow located on the lower left corner of the main 
window. It containts the local and remote ip of the connection, the peer phone
number and channel bundling information.

Connection control:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The connection can be controlled using the three buttons on the upper side of
the main window. The can be toggled either using the small vertical arrow on
the lower left corner or using the -lamps command line option (see below).
The buttons are green, yellow and red. The yellow one cuts the current connection.
The red one does the same, as well as disabling the dialing for the specified 
device. The green one triggers the dialing for the specified device.

For those of you who find the lamps to be too small and hard to hit :)) - use
the middle mouse button anywhere on the status display to trigger the 
connection on/off.

Channel bundling (aka MPPP):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If the device shown is a master mppp device (for channel bundling), then the
left mouse button is used to control the master connection and the right mouse
button is used to control the slave connection, i.e. if ippp1 is shown and it 
is the master device of ippp2, then pressing the green lamp with the left
mouse button starts the connection of ippp1 (master) while the right mouse
button starts the connection of ippp2 (slave). The same applies to the yellow
lamp. 
Please note that starting a slave connection while the master is offline
automatically starts the master connection too. Respectively: stopping the
master connection while the slave is on autimatically stops the slave too.
Another useful thing to know is that you can start/stop your slave connection 
while the master connection is on without corrupting any downloads in progress.
The only effect you notice is that your connection becomes faster or slower,
and a small label "bundled" beneath the status display.

NOTE: You must have configured your ISDN system for channel bundling for these
      features to work.


Multiple devices:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As of version 1.7, wmisdn can handle different devices, which can be toggled 
by pressing on the device name at the lower right corner of the main window.


Compiling and installing:
-------------------------
If you downloaded wmisdn as a binary, just put it anywhere you want. I'd 
recommend /usr/local/bin, but it's only a matter of taste, as long as your
system knows where it is. Please note, that as wmisdn highly depends on the
kernel (especially on the isdn4linux subsystem), a downloaded binary may not
work for your system. In this case, you should use the source.

Detailed instructions for configuring your system (i.e. permissions for device
files etc) as well as compiling from source can be found in the INSTALL file.

Command line options:
---------------------

Use the -w option if you want to dock wmisdn into the Windowmaker dock.
The -s option is useful for Afterstep and other dock-enabled window managers.

The -dialmode option tells wmisdn which dialmode to use for the device when
the user presses the yellow button requesting that the connection (if any)
is stopped and the dialing is enabled. You can use 'auto' for enabling the
autodialing feature of i4l or manual. If the option is not present wmisdn
tries to get the current setting from the device. If the device's dialmode
setting is set to 'off', indicating that the device has been disabled, the
defualt setting 'auto' is assumed.

The -device option tells which ippp devices should be monitored. The devices
are expected as a comma separated list of device names with NO BLANKS in it,
i.e. "-device ippp0,ippp1,ippp5". The order of the device names is not 
important. On most systems the only configured device is ippp0 and this is 
the default setting if none specified. 
If you want to monitor a slave device (for mppp), you should also specify 
it using this option. 

The -lamps option causes the connection control buttons to be displayed 
directly upon startup, as if some magic hand has pressed the
vertical-arrow-button that toggles them. It is intended for users who need
them permanently. If you have set the hangup timeouts and the default routes
properly, so that dialing and hanging up is performed automatically, you
won't need the control buttons very often and since I find that wmisdn looks
better without them, they don't appear on the default display mode.

The -font option can be used to specify a different font for the info window
and the device display (the default font is the LED-builtin). The font name
must follow the X11 font naming conventions and must be placed in quotation
marks (take a look at xfontsel if you don't know the font names on your 
system).

The -usescripts and -path options deal with the scripting feature of wmisdn.
For more information, read the SCRIPTS file.

If it doesn't work:
-------------------

If wmisdn starts and doesn't do what is expected, then take a look at your
syslog messages. In most cases, there will be an error message. Check if the
user rights are set properly (as explained above).
Check your device using the isdnctrl and ifconfig commands.

Bugs, suggestions, etc.:
------------------------

There surely are some. I'm currently not aware of any, so feel free to mail
me bug reports and suggestions. If you mail a bug report, please
include the output of the following commands:

ifconfig
isdnctrl list <name of you ippp device>
cc -v
uname -a

as well as the name of the Linux distribution you are using.

If you are missing features like real time packet flow graphs or load
diagrams then take a look at wmifs or wmnd. These are really fine applets 
that implement these features for any network device, not only ippp and 
since they work fine and look good, I'm not planning to implement the same 
things in wmisdn.

Credits:
--------

Klaus Steven     - he did a lot of work for bringing 1.7 to 1.8, especially
                   an importang bugfix for wmisdn/aplha and the scripting 
                   feature, and gave me good ideas and advises throughout
Tom Berger       - for helping me with the very early version of wmisdn (0.1 :))
                   and giving good ideas (Dialing mode, etc)
Philip Lehman    - skins for wmisdn (coming soon :)
Torsten Hilbrich - status check patch
Jogi		 - command line args parsing patch

and many others for their support and suggestions


And:
----

Enjoy! Please mail me if you find the program useful so I can know if
I should keep maintaining it.

---------------------------------

                                    Tasho
									
                                    tasho.kaletha@gmx.de