[ILUG] PPP for a normal user

[Anthony]

Hi all,

Last year after a week of tearing out my hair, I succeeded in getting a
functioning chat script working with my Xircom credit card modem.

Lately I've been thinking that it would be nice to connect to the
Internet without having to log in as root. ( It ties in with my long
term goal of weaning the family away from Microsoft.)
So I ran `chmod +s /usr/sbin/pppd' resulting in permissions of 
-rwsr-sr-x    1 root     root    /usr/sbin/pppd*

Trying `/etc/ppp/ppp-on' then gave the following lines in my logs:
pppd[1345]: pppd 2.3.11 started by ant, uid 500
pppd[1345]: Failed to open /dev/modem: Permission denied            

so I checked the following:
$ ls -l /dev/modem
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root	/dev/modem -> /dev/ttyS1
then, $ ls -l /dev/ttyS1
crw-------    1 root     tty	/dev/ttyS1

Running `chmod o=wr /dev/ttyS1' fixed it so that everything works fine
when /dev/ttyS has the permissions crw----rw-

I have it working OK now but I'm wondering if there is a more elegant or
secure way of doing so. I'm always interested in learning the best
methodology (especially from a security point of view) for accomplishing
such tasks in Linux.

Thanks in advance,
Anthony Geoghegan