Configure PPPoE DSL Connection on Arch Linux/Manjaro with pppoe-setup

Cyrus Kao10 Jan 2022

Last modified on 25 Apr 2023 @ 05:02:45.

Most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) offer multiple dynamic IP addresses and even come with a static one. To take advantage of that, we'll be setting up a PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet) DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connection on our own machine to obtain an independent IP address.

And just like pppoeconf from Debian/Ubuntu, Arch Linux/Manjaro has its own preferred ways to configure a PPPoE connection. This guide refers to Direct modem connection on ArchWiki. We'll be using pppoe-setup from package rp-pppoe to set up the connection, and configure to dial-up at system startup.

Prerequisites

Before configuring a PPPoE connection, you need to connect your computer to your DSL modem with an Ethernet cable.

To be aware, a DSL modem is not a router (which is what most people usually get their Internet connection from) but the router is connected to it.

Install `rp-pppoe`

rp-pppoe is a easy-to-use command-line tool to set up PPPoE connections. It uses ppp under the hood and saved us a lot of trouble from configuring manually.

To install rp-pppoe package from the official repository:

Using yay
```
$ yay -S rp-pppoe
```
Using pacman (which is the default package manager of Arch Linux/Manjaro)
```
$ sudo pacman -S rp-pppoe
```

Setting Up Connection

To set up the PPPoE connection:

$ sudo pppoe-setup

Then pppoe-setup will ask you some questions about the configuration.

Configure User Name

Enter the user name provided by your ISP:

USER NAME

>>> Enter your PPPoE user name: username@yourisp.com
Output

Configure Network Interface

Enter the network interface is currently connected to your DSL modem:

INTERFACE

>>> Enter the Ethernet interface connected to the DSL modem
For Solaris, this is likely to be something like /dev/hme0.
For Linux, it will be ethn, where 'n' is a number.
(default enp0s31f6): enp0s31f6
Output

To find out the existing network interfaces:

$ ip link show

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
		link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp0s31f6: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
		link/ether d8:9e:f3:26:92:50 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: wlp1s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
		link/ether 52:63:51:a0:2d:85 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr ec:08:6b:2a:4d:a1
Output

Configure DNS

Enter the IP address of your ISP's DNS server or leave it as server to obtain it automatically from your ISP:

DNS

Please enter the IP address of your ISP's primary DNS server.
If your ISP claims that 'the server will provide DNS addresses',
enter 'server' (all lower-case) here.
If you just press enter, I will assume you know what you are
doing and not modify your DNS setup.
>>> Enter the DNS information here: server
Output

Configure Password

Enter the password provided by your ISP:

PASSWORD

>>> Please enter your PPPoE password:
>>> Please re-enter your PPPoE password:
Output

Configure Firewall

Enter the desired firewall rules:

FIREWALLING

Please choose the firewall rules to use.  Note that these rules are
very basic.  You are strongly encouraged to use a more sophisticated
firewall setup; however, these will provide basic security.  If you
are running any servers on your machine, you must choose 'NONE' and
set up firewalling yourself.  Otherwise, the firewall rules will deny
access to all standard servers like Web, e-mail, ftp, etc.  If you
are using SSH, the rules will block outgoing SSH connections which
allocate a privileged source port.

The firewall choices are:
0 - NONE: This script will not set any firewall rules.  You are responsible
          for ensuring the security of your machine.  You are STRONGLY
          recommended to use some kind of firewall rules.
1 - STANDALONE: Appropriate for a basic stand-alone web-surfing workstation
2 - MASQUERADE: Appropriate for a machine acting as an Internet gateway
                for a LAN
>>> Choose a type of firewall (0-2): 0
Output

To not disturb the configuration of your firewall, I'd suggest you don't let setup-pppoe handle firewall settings.

Finishing Up

After double checking the configuration and accept to update /etc/ppp/pppoe.conf, your PPPoE connection is now fully set up:

** Summary of what you entered **

Ethernet Interface: enp0s31f6
User name:          username@yourisp.com
Activate-on-demand: No
DNS addresses:      Supplied by ISP's server
Firewalling:        NONE

>>> Accept these settings and adjust configuration files (y/n)? y
Adjusting /etc/ppp/pppoe.conf
Adjusting /etc/ppp/pap-secrets and /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

Congratulations, it should be all set up!

Type 'pppoe-start' to bring up your PPPoE link and 'pppoe-stop' to bring
it down.  Type 'pppoe-status' to see the link status.
Output

To start the PPPoE connection:

$ sudo pppoe-start

. Connected!
Output

To check if the PPPoE connection is started successfully:

$ pppoe-status

pppoe-status: Link is up and running on interface ppp0
6: ppp0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1492 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 3
    link/ppp
Output

Now the network traffic is going through both Ethernet and PPP interface (in my case is enp0s31f6 and ppp0):

Dial-Up at System Startup

By default, you'll need to manually run sudo pppoe-start to start your PPPoE connection on every bootup. To set up automatic connection by enabling service adsl:

$ sudo systemctl enable adsl

To check if adsl is up and running:

$ systemctl status adsl

● adsl.service - ADSL Daemon
	Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/adsl.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
	Active: active (running) since Fri 2022-01-07 16:04:12 CST; 4s ago
Output

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