Different methods for online detection
--------------------------------------

/etc/ppp/peers/<provider>
-------------------------

The scripts /etc/ppp/ip-{up,down}.d/{1,99}masqmail make use of the variable
$IPPARAM, which you can define in your /etc/ppp/peers/<provider>
configuration with the ippparam option, eg:

ippparam arcor

If this is set, $IPPARAM will be written to a 'route' file. Using some
awk magic, the scripts finds out which file you have defined for
online detection (if online_detect=file) and writes the value of
$IPPARAM to this file. Masqmail then uses this file to determine its
online status.


/etc/network/interfaces
-----------------------

You can use the /etc/network/interfaces script to tell Masqmail
when a link goes up, and Masqmail shall flush its queue and/or fetch mail.

This is an example for a static interface:

iface eth0 inet static
        # mroute/name used by ip-up.d/masqmail BDL May02
        name SNRC
        address 130.130.10.233
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        gateway 130.130.10.254

(This example is from Ben Low. Thanks, Ben :-))

If you use Masqmail on a notebook, you can define several interfaces,
depending on the network you are in. Read
/usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples/interfaces.gz
for examples.

The scripts /etc/network/if-{up,down}.d/1masqmail make use of the NAME
in the same way as the /etc/ppp/ip-{up,down}.d/ scripts. See above.


guessnet and /etc/network/interfaces
------------------------------------

Another nice tool is guessnet. See /usr/share/doc/guessnet/README.gz,
if you have guessnet installed. You can use it in combination with the
method described above for /etc/network/interfaces.


guessnet and the 'online_pipe' option
-------------------------------------

Alternatively you can also use guessnet directly to check the online
status. To do this, set in
/etc/masqmail/masqmail.conf

#
online_detect=pipe
online_pipe="/usr/bin/guessnet < /etc/masqmail/guessnet.conf"
#

and create a file
/etc/masqmail/guessnet.conf

Example:
192.168.0.35 00:10:5A:24:C5:B6 192.168.0.1 default
192.168.2.1 00:80:AD:97:D5:2D 192.168.0.1 home


masqdialer and the 'online_pipe' option
---------------------------------------

Yet another possibility for ppp dialups is masqdialer:

Example:
#
online_detect=pipe
online_pipe="/usr/bin/mservdetect 192.168.1.2 224"
#

This is useful if you have a gateway with masqdialer running
and Masqmail on another host behind ('behind' as seen from the internet)

Note:
The online detect method 'mserver' is deprecated, and this debian
package comes with that option disabled. You can still recompile the
package with the ./configure option --enable-mserver, but this may be
removed in future version of Masqmail.