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Date:      Tue, 9 Apr 1996 15:39:27 -0400 (EDT)
From:      John Brann <jbrann@panix.com>
To:        brian@filoli.com (Brian Queen)
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org (freeq)
Subject:   Re: mystery phone call
Message-ID:  <199604091939.PAA00678@jbrann.dialup.access.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960408142223.17681A-100000@sundial.filoli.com> from Brian Queen at "Apr 8, 96 02:25:40 pm"

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Brian Queen wrote...
> In the middle of the night last night my machine made a call to
> somewhere, and I even heard the hard drive churning.

Yes, it will.  This is '/etc/daily' being run by cron.

> 
> Is there a log file I can check to see what was going on?

mail sent to root gives you the results.

> 
> I was logged out so ppp on demand was not functional, so it was not the
> sendmail trying to route mail through my ppp link.

ppp is always there.  It dials out as soon as something tries to send
a packet out.

Guessing (because this is what my machine does...) I'd say that you aren't
running DNS, but do have your ISP's DNS server(s) defined in /etc/resolv.conf.

There are 2 parts of the usual 'daily' shell script which will cause name
resolution - 'mailq' and the 'netstat' command (I forget the parameters).
Naturally, in order to resolve a hostname, the machine will send a request
to your ISP - waking up ppp.

2 solutions - You could remove the offending steps from '/etc/daily' or,
do what I do - set the modem to dial silently.  That way it didn't
wake me up... :-)
> 
> It may have been sendmail trying to do uucp, but my uucp log shows no
> activity for the past three days.
> 
> Brian
> 

John

-- 
Beavis and Butt-Head;  Vladimir and Estragon for the '90s.

finger jbrann@panix.com for pgp public key



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