Initiate Lighthouse Central Dial from CLI

Lighthouse 4 has reached End of Life. This information is for archival purposes only.

Once Lighthouse dialpool has been configured, you can start and stop a dialout session to a remote console server from the CLI using the following steps.

1. List modems in dialpool:

config -g config.dialpool | grep virtualportname

Output:

config.dialpool.modems.modem1.virtualportname my-modem1
config.dialpool.modems.modem2.virtualportname my-modem2
config.dialpool.modems.modem3.virtualportname my-modem3

2. Select a modem by its config prefix (e.g. config.dialpool.modems.modem1) and ensure it's not in use:

config -g config.modems.modem1 | grep diallednode

Output:

No output indicates this modem is not in use - if there is output, try another modem

3. Select the console server (aka "node") to dial by its name (e.g. my-im4248):

node-command -l

Output:

1: localhost:53971 my-im4248
2: localhost:52134 my-acm5508
...

4. Start the connection:

config -s config.dialpool.modems.modem1.diallednode=my-im4248
config -s config.dialpool.modems.modem1.userdialling=$(whoami)
config -r dialpool

5. You can monitor connection status by watching the system log:

tail /var/log/messages

Output indicating the PPP connection has been established (the addresses will match your configuration):

<29>Jul 9 10:25:16 pppd[25842]: local  IP address 192.168.1.1
<29>Jul  9 10:25:16 pppd[25842]: remote IP address 192.168.1.50

6. When you are ready to stop the connection, delete the config settings set in step 4:

config -d config.dialpool.modems.modem1.diallednode
config -d config.dialpool.modems.modem1.userdialling
config -r dialpool