pppd has a flag called 'persist' which will make it dial back in again. if
you are using wget, when the ppp connection is lost, wget's transfer
will fail, but wget will continue to retry, and usually pppd can get
logged back in before wget gives up entirely.

I remember back in the day, downloading the rpms for a new redhat version
(these were the bad old days when I used redat) overnight for 3 or 4
nights straight using this method. be sure to use the -c flag on wget,
it will pick up where it left off (even in the middle of a file). with
-c you can kill wget at any time and start it up again later.

I wouldn't worry too much about leaving a root shell logged in. you
can't really attach to a running shell remotely easily at all (unless the
shell is running inside screen). it's usually a lot simpler to find an
exploit that gives you a new root shell rather than hijack an existing
root shell. of course, this assumes you don't have malicious roommates
with access to the console :)

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 08:48:14AM -0700, Siri Amrit Kaur wrote:
> > wget would be the obvious choice here.
> 
> My ISP cuts me off after 4 hours. I think there's a way to set ppp to redial 
> but then the download doesn't seem to resume. Then I'm left with an internet 
> connection on all night su to root and that's more insecure than I ever do!
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