KPPP Pain

Red Hat users stuck on dial-up connections are probably already familiar with this problem: every time KPPP is brought up to dial, it asks for the root password. This is all well and good if you’re the only user on your machine and don’t mind typing in a complex password before every ‘Net session (and your root password is sufficiently complex, I hope). However, if you share a machine with spouses/children/friends, you may not want to hand over the keys to the kingdom just to get them online.

Fortunately there’s a simple solution. KPPP in Red Hat is tied to a PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module), so all you have to do is edit the authentication configuration for KPPP and it will stop demanding the root password. Easy instructions can be found right here. If you still want to limit access to certain users, this is possible as well, and the instructions for that configuration are also included in the linked page.