1 This is the README file for ppp-2.5, a package which implements the
2 Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) to provide Internet connections over
3 serial lines and other types of links which can be considered to be
10 The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) provides a standard way to establish
11 a network connection over a serial link. At present, this package
12 supports IP and IPV6 and the protocols layered above them, such as TCP
15 This PPP implementation consists of two parts:
17 - Kernel code, which establishes a network interface and passes
18 packets between the serial port, the kernel networking code and the
19 PPP daemon (pppd). This code is implemented using STREAMS modules on
20 Solaris, and as a line discipline under Linux.
22 - The PPP daemon (pppd), which negotiates with the peer to establish
23 the link and sets up the ppp network interface. Pppd includes support
24 for authentication, so you can control which other systems may make a
25 PPP connection and what IP addresses they may use.
27 The platforms supported by this package are Linux and Solaris.
28 (There is also code to support various old flavours of Unix in the git
29 repository, but it is quite old and unmaintained.)
31 The kernel code for Linux is no longer distributed with this package,
32 since the relevant kernel code is in the official Linux kernel source
33 (and has been for many years) and is included in all reasonably modern
34 Linux distributions. The Linux kernel code supports using PPP over
35 things other than serial ports, such as PPP over Ethernet and PPP over
38 Similarly, the kernel code for Solaris is no longer distributed with
39 this package. See the Illumos web site for pointers to the kernel
40 module source code and build environment.
42 https://www.illumos.org/
48 The file SETUP contains general information about setting up your
49 system for using PPP. There is also a README file for each supported
50 system, which contains more specific details for installing PPP on
51 that system. The supported systems, and the corresponding README
57 In each case you start by running the ./configure script. This works
58 out which operating system you are using and creates the appropriate
59 makefiles. You then run `make' to compile the user-level code, and
60 (as root) `make install' to install the user-level programs pppd, chat
63 N.B. Since 2.3.0, leaving the permitted IP addresses column of the
64 pap-secrets or chap-secrets file empty means that no addresses are
65 permitted. You need to put a "*" in that column to allow the peer to
66 use any IP address. (This only applies where the peer is
67 authenticating itself to you, of course.)
70 What's new in ppp-2.5.2
71 ***********************
73 * Some old and probably unused code has been removed, notably the
74 pppgetpass program and the passprompt plugin, and some of the files
75 in the sample and scripts directories.
77 * If a remote number has been set, it is available to scripts in the
78 REMOTENUMBER environment variable.
80 * The Solaris port has been updated, including updated installation
81 instructions in README.sol2.
83 * Various other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
86 What was new in ppp-2.5.1
87 *************************
89 * The files copied to /etc/ppp (or <sysconfdir>/ppp) now have
90 ".example" appended to their filenames, so as to indicate that they
91 are just examples, and to avoid overwriting existing configuration
94 * Pppd can now measure and log the round-trip time (RTT) of LCP
95 echo-requests and record them in a binary file structured as a
96 circular buffer. Other programs or scripts can examine the file and
97 provide real-time statistics on link latency. This is enabled by a
98 new "lcp-rtt-file" option.
100 * New scripts net-init, net-pre-up and net-down are executed in the
101 process of bringing the network interface up and down. They provide
102 additional, more deterministic ways for pppd to interact with the
103 rest of the networking configuration.
105 * New options have been added to allow the system administrator to
106 set the location of various scripts and secrets files.
108 * A new "noresolvconf" option tells pppd not to write the
109 /etc/ppp/resolv.conf file; DNS server addresses, if obtained from
110 the peer, are still passed to scripts in the environment.
112 * Pppd will now create the directory for the TDB connection database
113 if it doesn't already exist.
115 * Kernel module code for Solaris is no longer included.
117 * Support for decompressing compressed packets has been removed from
118 pppdump, because the zlib code used was old and potentially
121 * Some old code has been removed.
123 * Various other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
126 What was new in ppp-2.5.0.
127 **************************
129 The 2.5.0 release is a major release of pppd which contains breaking
130 changes for third-party plugins, a complete revamp of the build-system
131 and that allows for flexibility of configuring features as needed.
134 * Support for PEAP authentication by Eivind Næss and Rustam Kovhaev
135 * Support for loading PKCS12 certificate envelopes
136 * Adoption of GNU Autoconf / Automake build environment, by Eivind Næss
138 * Support for pkgconfig tool has been added by Eivind Næss.
139 * Bunch of fixes and cleanup to PPPoE and IPv6 support by Pali Rohár.
140 * Major revision to PPPD's Plugin API by Eivind Næss.
141 - Defines in which describes what features was included in pppd
142 - Functions now prefixed with explicit ppp_* to indicate that
143 pppd functions being called.
144 - Header files were renamed to better align with their features,
145 and now use proper include guards
146 - A pppdconf.h file is supplied to allow third-party modules to use
147 the same feature defines pppd was compiled with.
148 - No extern declarations of internal variable names of pppd,
149 continued use of these extern variables are considered
151 * Lots of internal fixes and cleanups for Radius and PPPoE by Jaco Kroon
152 * Dropped IPX support, as Linux has dropped support in version 5.15
154 * Many more fixes and cleanups.
155 * Pppd is no longer installed setuid-root.
157 - ipv6cp-noremote, ipv6cp-nosend, ipv6cp-use-remotenumber,
158 ipv6-up-script, ipv6-down-script
160 - usepeerwins, ipcp-no-address, ipcp-no-addresses, nosendip
161 * On Linux, any baud rate can be set on a serial port provided the
162 kernel serial driver supports that.
164 Note that if you have built and installed previous versions of this
165 package and you want to continue having configuration and TDB files in
166 /etc/ppp, you will need to use the --sysconfdir option to ./configure.
168 For a list of the changes made during the 2.4 series releases of this
169 package, see the Changes-2.4 file.
175 This package supports two packet compression methods: Deflate and
176 BSD-Compress. Other compression methods which are in common use
177 include Predictor, LZS, and MPPC. These methods are not supported for
178 two reasons - they are patent-encumbered, and they cause some packets
179 to expand slightly, which pppd doesn't currently allow for.
180 BSD-Compress and Deflate (which uses the same algorithm as gzip) don't
187 Most communication relating to this package happens on github at
188 https://github.com/ppp-project/ppp/. The linux-ppp@vger.kernel.org
189 mailing list also exists and can be used.
191 If you find bugs in this package, the best thing to do is to create an
192 issue on github. If you can't or don't want to do that, you can post
193 to linux-ppp@vger.kernel.org, or report them to the maintainer for the
194 port for the operating system you are using:
196 Linux Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>
197 Solaris James Carlson <carlsonj@workingcode.com>
203 All of the code can be freely used and redistributed. The individual
204 source files each have their own copyright and permission notice.
205 Pppd, pppstats and pppdump are under BSD-style notices. Some of the
206 pppd plugins are GPL'd. Chat has an MIT licence notice.
212 The primary site for releases of this software is:
214 ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/