-This is the README file for ppp-2.3, a package which implements the
+This is the README file for ppp-2.4, a package which implements the
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) to provide Internet connections over
serial lines.
The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) provides a standard way to establish
a network connection over a serial link. At present, this package
supports IP and the protocols layered above IP, such as TCP and UDP.
-The Linux port of this package also has support for IPX.
+The Linux and Solaris ports of this package have optional support for
+IPV6; the Linux port of this package also has support for IPX.
This software consists of two parts:
- Kernel code, which establishes a network interface and passes
packets between the serial port, the kernel networking code and the
PPP daemon (pppd). This code is implemented using STREAMS modules on
-SunOS 4.x, Solaris 2.x, System V Release 4, and OSF/1, and as a
-line discipline under Ultrix, NextStep, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux.
+SunOS 4.x and Solaris, and as a line discipline under Linux and FreeBSD.
- The PPP daemon (pppd), which negotiates with the peer to establish
the link and sets up the ppp network interface. Pppd includes support
for authentication, so you can control which other systems may make a
PPP connection and what IP addresses they may use.
+The primary platforms supported by this package are Linux and Solaris.
+Code for SunOS 4.x is included here but is largely untested. I have
+code for NeXTStep, FreeBSD, SVR4, Tru64 (Digital Unix), AIX and Ultrix
+but no active maintainers for these platforms. Code for all of these
+except AIX is included in the ppp-2.3.11 release.
+
Installation.
*************
that system. The supported systems, and the corresponding README
files, are:
- Digital Unix (OSF/1) README.osf
Linux README.linux
- NetBSD, FreeBSD README.bsd
- NeXTStep README.next
Solaris 2 README.sol2
SunOS 4.x README.sunos4
- System V Release 4 README.svr4
- Ultrix 4.x README.ultrix
-
-Unfortunately, AIX 4 is no longer supported, since I don't have a
-maintainer for the AIX 4 port. If you want to volunteer, contact me.
-The Ultrix port is untested, as I no longer have access to an Ultrix
-box.
In each case you start by running the ./configure script. This works
out which operating system you are using and creates symbolic links to
user-level code, and (as root) `make install' to install the
user-level programs pppd, chat and pppstats.
-The procedures for installing the kernel code vary from system to
-system. On some systems, the kernel code can be loaded into a running
-kernel using a `modload' facility. On others, the kernel image has to
-be recompiled and the system rebooted. See the README.* files for
-details.
-
N.B. Since 2.3.0, leaving the permitted IP addresses column of the
pap-secrets or chap-secrets file empty means that no addresses are
permitted. You need to put a "*" in that column to allow the peer to
authenticating itself to you, of course.)
-What's new in ppp-2.3.5.
+What's new in ppp-2.4.1.
************************
-* Minor corrections to the Digital UNIX and NetBSD ports.
-
-* A workaround to avoid tickling a bug in the `se' serial port driver
-on Sun PCI Ultra machines running Solaris.
-
-* Fixed a bug in the negotiation of the Microsoft WINS server address
-option.
-
-* Fixed a bug in the Linux port where it would fail for kernel
-versions above 2.1.99.
-
+* Pppd can now print out the set of options that are in effect. The
+ new `dump' option causes pppd to print out the option values after
+ option parsing is complete. The `dryrun' option causes pppd to
+ print the options and then exit.
-What was new in ppp-2.3.4.
-**************************
-
-* The NeXT port has been updated, thanks to Steve Perkins.
-
-* ppp-2.3.4 compiles and works under Solaris 2.6, using either gcc or
-cc.
-
-* With the Solaris, SVR4 and SunOS ports, you can control the choice
-of C compiler, C compiler options, and installation directories by
-editing the svr4/Makedefs or sunos4/Makedefs file.
+* The option parsing code has been fixed so that options in the
+ per-tty options file are parsed correctly, and don't override values
+ from the command line in most cases.
-* Until now, we have been using the number 24 to identify Deflate
-compression in the CCP negotiations, which was the number in the draft
-RFC describing Deflate. The number actually assigned to Deflate is
-26. The code has been changed to use 26, but to allow the use of 24
-for now for backwards compatibility. (This can be disabled with the
-`nodeflatedraft' option to pppd.)
+* The plugin option now looks in /usr/lib/pppd/<pppd-version> (for
+ example, /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.1b1) for shared objects for plugins if
+ there is no slash in the plugin name.
-* Fixed some bugs in the linux driver and deflate compressor which
-were causing compression problems, including corrupting long
-incompressible packets sometimes.
+* When loading a plugin, pppd will now check the version of pppd for
+ which the plugin was compiled, and refuse to load it if it is
+ different to pppd's version string. To enable this, the plugin
+ source needs to #include "pppd.h" and have a line saying:
+ char pppd_version[] = VERSION;
-* Fixes to the PAM and shadow password support in pppd, from Al
-Longyear and others.
+* There is a bug in zlib, discovered by James Carlson, which can cause
+ kernel memory corruption if Deflate is used with the lowest setting,
+ 8. As a workaround pppd will now insist on using at least 9.
-* Pppd now sets some environment variables for scripts it invokes
-(ip-up/down, auth-ip/down), giving information about the connection.
-The variables it sets are PEERNAME, IPLOCAL, IPREMOTE, UID, DEVICE,
-SPEED, and IFNAME.
+* Pppd should compile on Solaris and SunOS again.
-* Pppd now has an `updetach' option, which will cause it to detach
-from its controlling terminal once the link has come up (i.e. once it
-is available for IP traffic).
+* Pppd should now set the MTU correctly on demand-dialled interfaces.
-What was new in ppp-2.3.3.
+What was new in ppp-2.4.0.
**************************
-* Fixed compilation problems under SunOS.
+* Multilink: this package now allows you to combine multiple serial
+ links into one logical link or `bundle', for increased bandwidth and
+ reduced latency. This is currently only supported under the
+ Linux-2.3.99pre5 or later kernels.
-* Fixed a bug introduced into chat in 2.3.2, and compilation problems
-introduced into the MS-CHAP implementation in 2.3.2.
+* All the pppd processes running on a system now write information
+ into a common database. I used the `tdb' code from samba for this.
-* The linux kernel driver has been updated for recent 2.1-series
-kernel changes, and it now will ask kerneld to load compression
-modules when required, if the kernel is configured to support kerneld.
+* New hooks have been added.
-* Pppd should now compile correctly under linux on systems with glibc.
-
-
-What was new in ppp-2.3.2.
-**************************
+For a list of the changes made during the 2.3 series releases of this
+package, see the Changes-2.3 file.
-* In 2.3.1, I made a change which was intended to make pppd able to
-detect loss of CD during or immediately after the connection script
-runs. Unfortunately, this had the side-effect that the connection
-script wouldn't work at all on some systems. This change has been
-reversed.
-* Fix compilation problems in the Linux kernel driver.
-
-
-What was new in ppp-2.3.1.
-**************************
-
-* Enhancements to chat, thanks to Francis Demierre. Chat can now
-accept comments in the chat script file, and has new SAY, HANGUP,
-CLR_ABORT and CLR_REPORT keywords.
-
-* Fixed a bug which causes 2.3.0 to crash Solaris systems.
-
-* Bug-fixes and restructuring of the Linux kernel driver.
-
-* The holdoff behaviour of pppd has been changed slightly: now, if
-the link comes up for IP (or other network protocol) traffic, we
-consider that the link has been successfully established, and don't
-enforce the holdoff period after the link goes down.
-
-* Pppd should now correctly wait for CD (carrier detect) from the
-modem, even when the serial port initially had CLOCAL set, and it
-should also detect loss of CD during or immediately after the
-connection script runs.
-
-* Under linux, pppd will work with older 2.2.0* version kernel
-drivers, although demand-dialling is not supported with them.
-
-* Minor bugfixes for pppd.
-
-
-What was new in ppp-2.3.
-************************
+Compression methods.
+********************
-* Demand-dialling. Pppd now has a mode where it will establish the
-network interface immediately when it starts, but not actually bring
-the link up until it sees some data to be sent. Look for the demand
-option description in the pppd man page. Demand-dialling is not
-supported under Ultrix or NeXTStep.
-
-* Idle timeout. Pppd will optionally terminate the link if no data
-packets are sent or received within a certain time interval.
-
-* Pppd now runs the /etc/ppp/auth-up script, if it exists, when the
-peer successfully authenticates itself, and /etc/ppp/auth-down when
-the connection is subsequently terminated. This can be useful for
-accounting purposes.
-
-* A new packet compression scheme, Deflate, has been implemented.
-This uses the same compression method as `gzip'. This method is free
-of patent or copyright restrictions, and it achieves better
-compression than BSD-Compress. It does consume more CPU cycles for
-compression than BSD-Compress, but this shouldn't be a problem for
-links running at 100kbit/s or less.
-
-* There is no code in this distribution which is covered by Brad
-Clements' restrictive copyright notice. The STREAMS modules for SunOS
-and OSF/1 have been rewritten, based on the Solaris 2 modules, which
-were written from scratch without any Clements code.
-
-* Pppstats has been reworked to clean up the output format somewhat.
-It also has a new -d option which displays data rate in kbyte/s for
-those columns which would normally display bytes.
-
-* Pppd options beginning with - or + have been renamed, e.g. -ip
-became noip, +chap became require-chap, etc. The old options are
-still accepted for compatibility but may be removed in future.
-
-* Pppd now has some options (such as the new `noauth' option) which
-can only be specified if it is being run by root, or in an
-"privileged" options file: /etc/ppp/options or an options file in the
-/etc/ppp/peers directory. There is a new "call" option to read
-options from a file in /etc/ppp/peers, making it possible for non-root
-users to make unauthenticated connections, but only to certain trusted
-peers. My intention is to make the `auth' option the default in a
-future release.
-
-* Several minor new features have been added to pppd, including the
-maxconnect and welcome options. Pppd will now terminate the
-connection when there are no network control protocols running. The
-allowed IP address(es) field in the secrets files can now specify
-subnets (with a notation like 123.45.67.89/24) and addresses which are
-not acceptable (put a ! on the front).
-
-* Numerous bugs have been fixed (no doubt some have been introduced :-)
-Thanks to those who reported bugs in ppp-2.2.
+This package supports two packet compression methods: Deflate and
+BSD-Compress. Other compression methods which are in common use
+include Predictor, LZS, and MPPC. These methods are not supported for
+two reasons - they are patent-encumbered, and they cause some packets
+to expand slightly, which pppd doesn't currently allow for.
+BSD-Compress is also patent-encumbered (its inclusion in this package
+can be considered a historical anomaly :-) but it doesn't ever expand
+packets. Neither does Deflate, which uses the same algorithm as gzip.
Patents.
If you find bugs in this package, please report them to the maintainer
for the port for the operating system you are using:
-Digital Unix (OSF/1) Farrell Woods <ftw@zk3.dec.com>
-Linux Al Longyear <longyear@pobox.com>
-NetBSD Matthew Green <mrg@eterna.com.au
-FreeBSD Peter Wemm <peter@haywire.DIALix.COM>
-NeXTStep Steve Perkins <perkins@cps.msu.edu>
-Solaris 2 Paul Mackerras <Paul.Mackerras@cs.anu.edu.au>
-SunOS 4.x Paul Mackerras <Paul.Mackerras@cs.anu.edu.au>
-System V Release 4 Matthias Apitz <Matthias.Apitz@SOFTCON.de>
-Ultrix 4.x Paul Mackerras (for want of anybody better :-)
+Linux Paul Mackerras <paulus@linuxcare.com>
+Solaris 2 James Carlson <james.d.carlson@east.sun.com>
+SunOS 4.x Adi Masputra <adi.masputra@sun.com>
Copyrights:
***********
-All of the code can be freely used and redistributed.
+All of the code can be freely used and redistributed. The individual
+source files each have their own copyright and permission notice; some
+have a BSD-style notice and some are under the GPL.
Distribution:
The primary site for releases of this software is:
- ftp://cs.anu.edu.au/pub/software/ppp/
+ ftp://linuxcare.com.au/pub/ppp/
-($Id: README,v 1.13 1998/05/04 06:14:31 paulus Exp $)
+($Id: README,v 1.24 2001/03/09 00:53:57 paulus Exp $)
projects / ppp.git / blobdiff