dip can simplify the process of connecting to a SLIP server, logging in, and configuring the SLIP device. Unless you have a leased line running to your SLIP server, dip is the way to go.
To use dip, you'll need to write a ``chat script'' which contains a list of commands used to communicate with the SLIP server at login time. These commands can automatically send your username/password to the server, as well as get information on your IP address from the server.
Here is an example dip chat script, for use with a dynamic IP address server. For static servers, you will need to set the variables $local and $remote to the values of your local IP address and server IP address, respectively, at the top of the script. See the dip man page for details.
dip automatically executes ifconfig and route commands based on the values of the variables $local and $remote. Here, those variables are assigned using the get... remote command, which obtains text from the SLIP server and assigns it to the named variable.
If the ifconfig and route commands that dip runs for you don't work, you can either run the correct commands in a shell script after executing dip, or modify the source for dip itself. Running dip with the -v option will print debugging information while the connection is being set up, which should help you to determine where things might be going awry.
Now, in order to run dip and open the SLIP connection, you can use a command such as:
Where the various dip files, and the chat script ( mychat.dip), are stored in /etc/dip.
The above discussion should be enough to get you well on your way to talking to the network, either via Ethernet or SLIP. Again, we strongly suggest looking into a book on TCP/IP network configuration, especially if your network has any special routing considerations, other than those mentioned here.