-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.
+supports IP and IPV6 and the protocols layered above them, such as TCP
+and UDP. The Linux port of this package also has support for IPX.
-This software consists of two parts:
+This PPP implementation 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.
+Solaris, and as a line discipline under Linux.
- 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 platforms supported by this package are Linux and Solaris. I have
+code for NeXTStep, FreeBSD, SunOS 4.x, 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.
+
+The kernel code for Linux is no longer distributed with this package,
+since the relevant kernel code is in the official Linux kernel source
+(and has been for many years) and is included in all reasonably modern
+Linux distributions. The Linux kernel code supports using PPP over
+things other than serial ports, such as PPP over Ethernet and PPP over
+ATM.
+
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.
+ Solaris README.sol2
In each case you start by running the ./configure script. This works
-out which operating system you are using and creates symbolic links to
-the appropriate makefiles. You then run `make' to compile the
-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.
+out which operating system you are using and creates the appropriate
+makefiles. You then run `make' to compile the user-level code, and
+(as root) `make install' to install the user-level programs pppd, chat
+and pppstats.
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
authenticating itself to you, of course.)
-What's new in ppp-2.3.4.
+What's new in ppp-2.4.5.
************************
-* The NeXT port has been updated, thanks to Steve Perkins.
+* Under Linux, pppd can now operate in a mode where it doesn't request
+ the peer's IP address, as some peers refuse to supply an IP address.
+ Since Linux supports device routes as well as gateway routes, it's
+ possible to have no remote IP address assigned to the ppp interface
+ and still route traffic over it.
+
+* Pppd now works better with 3G modems that do strange things such as
+ sending IPCP Configure-Naks with the same values over and over again.
+
+* The PPP over L2TP plugin is included, which works with the pppol2tp
+ PPP channel code in the Linux kernel. This allows pppd to be used
+ to set up tunnels using the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol.
-* ppp-2.3.4 compiles and works under Solaris 2.6, using either gcc or
-cc.
+* A new 'enable-session' option has been added, which enables session
+ accounting via PAM or wtwp/wtmpx, as appropriate. See the pppd man
+ page for details.
-* 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.
+* Several bugs have been fixed.
-* 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.)
-* Fixed some bugs in the linux driver and deflate compressor which
-were causing compression problems, including corrupting long
-incompressible packets sometimes.
+What was new in ppp-2.4.4.
+**************************
-* Fixes to the PAM and shadow password support in pppd, from Al
-Longyear and others.
+* Pppd will now run /etc/ppp/ip-pre-up, if it exists, after creating
+ the ppp interface and configuring its IP addresses but before
+ bringing it up. This can be used, for example, for adding firewall
+ rules for the interface.
-* 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.
+* Lots of bugs fixed, particularly in the area of demand-dialled and
+ persistent connections.
-* 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).
+* The rp-pppoe plugin now accepts any interface name (that isn't an
+ existing pppd option name) without putting "nic-" on the front of
+ it, not just eth*, nas*, tap* and br*.
-What was new in ppp-2.3.3.
+What was new in ppp-2.4.3.
**************************
-* Fixed compilation problems under SunOS.
+* The configure script now accepts --prefix and --sysconfdir options.
+ These default to /usr/local and /etc. If you want pppd put in
+ /usr/sbin as before, use ./configure --prefix=/usr.
+
+* Doing `make install' no longer puts example configuration files in
+ /etc/ppp. Use `make install-etcppp' if you want that.
+
+* The code has been updated to work with version 0.8.3 of libpcap.
+ Unfortunately the libpcap maintainers removed support for the
+ "inbound" and "outbound" keywords on PPP links, meaning that if you
+ link pppd with libpcap-0.8.3, you can't use those keywords in the
+ active-filter and pass-filter expressions. The support has been
+ reinstated in the CVS version and should be in future libpcap
+ releases. If you need the in/outbound keywords, use a later release
+ than 0.8.3, or get the CVS version from http://www.tcpdump.org.
+
+* There is a new option, child-timeout, which sets the length of time
+ that pppd will wait for child processes (such as the command
+ specified with the pty option) to exit before exiting itself. It
+ defaults to 5 seconds. After the timeout, pppd will send a SIGTERM
+ to any remaining child processes and exit. A value of 0 means no
+ timeout.
+
+* Various bugs have been fixed, including some CBCP packet parsing
+ bugs that could lead to the peer being able to crash pppd if CBCP
+ support is enabled.
+
+* Various fixes and enhancements to the radius and rp-pppoe plugins
+ have been added.
+
+* There is a new winbind plugin, from Andrew Bartlet of the Samba
+ team, which provides the ability to authenticate the peer against an
+ NT domain controller using MS-CHAP or MS-CHAPV2.
+
+* There is a new pppoatm plugin, by various authors, sent in by David
+ Woodhouse.
+
+* The multilink code has been substantially reworked. The first pppd
+ for a bundle still controls the ppp interface, but it doesn't exit
+ until all the links in the bundle have terminated. If the first
+ pppd is signalled to exit, it signals all the other pppds
+ controlling links in the bundle.
+
+* The TDB code has been updated to the latest version. This should
+ eliminate the problem that some people have seen where the database
+ file (/var/run/pppd.tdb) keeps on growing. Unfortunately, however,
+ the new code uses an incompatible database format. For this reason,
+ pppd now uses /var/run/pppd2.tdb as the database filename.
+
+
+What was new in ppp-2.4.2.
+**************************
-* Fixed a bug introduced into chat in 2.3.2, and compilation problems
-introduced into the MS-CHAP implementation in 2.3.2.
+* The CHAP code has been rewritten. Pppd now has support for MS-CHAP
+ V1 and V2 authentication, both as server and client. The new CHAP
+ code is cleaner than the old code and avoids some copyright problems
+ that existed in the old code.
-* 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.
+* MPPE (Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption) support has been added,
+ although the current implementation shouldn't be considered
+ completely secure. (There is no assurance that the current code
+ won't ever transmit an unencrypted packet.)
-* Pppd should now compile correctly under linux on systems with glibc.
+* James Carlson's implementation of the Extensible Authentication
+ Protocol (EAP) has been added.
+* Support for the Encryption Control Protocol (ECP) has been added.
-What was new in ppp-2.3.2.
-**************************
+* Some new plug-ins have been included:
+ - A plug-in for kernel-mode PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet)
+ - A plug-in for supplying the PAP password over a pipe from another
+ process
+ - A plug-in for authenticating using a Radius server.
+
+* Updates and bug-fixes for the Solaris port.
+
+* The CBCP (Call Back Control Protocol) code has been updated. There
+ are new options `remotenumber' and `allow-number'.
-* 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.
+* Extra hooks for plugins to use have been added.
-* Fix compilation problems in the Linux kernel driver.
+* There is now a `maxoctets' option, which causes pppd to terminate
+ the link once the number of bytes passed on the link exceeds a given
+ value.
+* There are now options to control whether pppd can use the IPCP
+ IP-Address and IP-Addresses options: `ipcp-no-address' and
+ `ipcp-no-addresses'.
-What was new in ppp-2.3.1.
+* Fixed several bugs, including potential buffer overflows in chat.
+
+
+What was new in ppp-2.4.1.
**************************
-* 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.
+* 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.
-* Fixed a bug which causes 2.3.0 to crash Solaris systems.
+* 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.
-* Bug-fixes and restructuring of the Linux kernel driver.
+* 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.
-* 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.
+* 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;
-* 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.
+* 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.
-* Under linux, pppd will work with older 2.2.0* version kernel
-drivers, although demand-dialling is not supported with them.
+* Pppd should compile on Solaris and SunOS again.
-* Minor bugfixes for pppd.
+* Pppd should now set the MTU correctly on demand-dialled interfaces.
-What was new in ppp-2.3.
-************************
+What was new in ppp-2.4.0.
+**************************
+
+* 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
+ 2.4.x and later Linux kernels.
+
+* All the pppd processes running on a system now write information
+ into a common database. I used the `tdb' code from samba for this.
+
+* New hooks have been added.
+
+For a list of the changes made during the 2.3 series releases of this
+package, see the Changes-2.3 file.
+
+
+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.
-
-
-Patents.
-********
-
-The BSD-Compress algorithm used for packet compression is the same as
-that used in the Unix "compress" command. It is apparently covered by
-U.S. patents 4,814,746 (owned by IBM) and 4,558,302 (owned by Unisys),
-and corresponding patents in various other countries (but not
-Australia). If this is of concern, you can build the package without
-including BSD-Compress. To do this, edit net/ppp-comp.h to change the
-definition of DO_BSD_COMPRESS to 0. The bsd-comp.c files are then no
-longer needed, so the references to bsd-comp.o may optionally be
-removed from the Makefiles.
+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 and Deflate (which uses the same algorithm as gzip) don't
+ever expand packets.
Contacts.
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@samba.org>
+Solaris James Carlson <carlson@workingcode.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.
+Pppd, pppstats and pppdump are under BSD-style notices. Some of the
+pppd plugins are GPL'd. Chat is public domain.
Distribution:
The primary site for releases of this software is:
- ftp://cs.anu.edu.au/pub/software/ppp/
+ ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/
-($Id: README,v 1.12 1998/03/31 04:31:33 paulus Exp $)
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