pppd dial on demand "per user"

[benny1967]

I've been using the /etc/init.d/net.ppp0 script for a while now to connect to my ADSL-provider.

The drawback is that with this solution, I can setup one account and use it - which is not OK now that 2 people with 2 distinct accounts use the PC and each of us is responsible for not exceeding the download limit set by the provider.

I first thought it would be pretty easy to use the demand option and put the username into the ~/.ppprc files; this wasn't too cool, though, because pppd in its current version doesn't even try to guess which user will login once all the init-scripts are finished.

It seems, though, that i'm the only one with this problem - google wasn't helpful, neither was a search here. I really don't want to depend on additional packages if it can be avoided. All I want is a pppd-configuration that is managed by root (the provider is the same for both accounts, so we'd share each and every option), a chap-secrets file that holds both of the account infos and the missing magic something that makes pppd use the first or the second depending on the user logged in. (BTW, it would be great if this were independent of the runlevel or means of logging in: If user A logs in using GDM and then becomes user B in xterm, pppd should use user B's account info when firefox is started from the "B"-shell)

Has nobody ever needed this? Any ideas on how it could be done with pppd?