Making alt+connect work on Debian/GNU-Linux (potato):

I don't have debian, but this file is culled from conversations with Philipp Stratmann and then Greg Boundy. They hoped it would save others some time; ditto. Pete.

The Provider

Analogue modem user Greg Boundy found a standard provider, as created by add-provider, worked fine; trying to use pon/poff with start/stop did not work for him.

But Philipp had ISDN and used the following provider definition successfully.

start /usr/sbin/isdnctrl dial ippp0
stop /usr/sbin/isdnctrl hangup ippp0
starts-answered

The ip-up files

The standard install works fine; unless you are perfectionist do not mess with your ip-up-file.

Now Debian does not have a single ip-up-file but an ip-up-script called to run parts in /etc/ppp/ip-up.d. So Philipp deleted the link to /etc/connect/ip-up and re re-named real-ip-up to ip-up.

In /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ add a file 10-alt-connect to signal the link up. (This should run after the DNS and firewall have been configured but before fetchmail, sendmail etc... are run.) 

#!/bin/sh
#
if ! /usr/bin/connect up; then
  kill -USR1 "$(cat /var/run/connectd.pid)"
fi

But now connectd does not wait for the ip-up-scripts to finish so Philip edited his get-mail-file: 

#!/bin/sh
#
/usr/bin/connect -N --session ip-up start
runq
/usr/bin/fetchmail -f /root/.fetchmailrc
runq &
/usr/bin/connect -N --session ip-up stop

And finally--for ISDN only--signal connectd that the link is down via /etc/ppp/ip-down.d/99-alt-connect 

#!/bin/sh
#
export CONNECTD_LINK="${2:-$DEVICE}"
/usr/bin/connect down