PPP for Linux Version 2.2.0 ============= based on ppp-2.2.0 Mar 1995 Michael Callahan callahan@maths.ox.ac.uk Al Longyear longyear@netcom.com Contents: INTRODUCTION CREDITS CHANGES FROM THE PREVIOUS VERSION FUTURE PLANS INSTALLATION PROBLEMS WHICH MAY OCCUR WHILE BUILDING THE KERNEL A REFERENCE TO UNDEFINED _mod_use_count_ BLOCK ON FREELIST AT nnnnnn ISN'T FREE GENERAL NETWORK CONFIGURATION CONNECTING TO A PPP SERVER IF IT WORKS IF IT DOESN'T WORK IF IT STILL DOESN'T WORK (OR, BUG REPORTS) DYNAMIC ADDRESS ASSIGNMENT SETTING UP A MACHINE FOR INCOMING PPP CONNECTIONS SETTING UP A MACHINE FOR INCOMING PPP CONNECTIONS WITH DYNAMIC IP ADDITIONAL INFORMATION DIP SUPPORT CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION This file is substantially derived from the previous version for the pppd process 2.2.0. Michael Callahan wrote that version. This particular version was written, modified, hacked, changed, whatever, by Al Longyear. If you find errors in this document, they are probably mine and not Michael's. This is a PPP driver for Linux. It has been used by many people and seems to be quite stable. It is capable of being used either as a 'client'--for connecting a Linux machine to a local Internet provider, for example--or as a 'server'--allowing a Linux machine with a modem and an Ethernet connection to the Internet to provide dial-in PPP links. (In fact, the PPP protocol does not make the distinction between client and server, but this is the way people often think about it.) The PPP protocol consists of two parts. One is a scheme for framing and encoding packets, the other is a series of protocols called LCP, IPCP, PAP and CHAP, for negotiating link options and for authentication. This package similarly consists of two parts: a kernel module which handles PPP's low-level framing protocol, and a user-level program called pppd which implements PPP's negotiation protocols. The kernel module assembles/disassembles PPP frames, handles error detection, and forwards packets between the serial port and either the kernel network code or the user-level program pppd. IP packets go directly to the kernel network code. So once pppd has negotiated the link, it in practice lies completely dormant until you want to take the link down, when it negotiates a graceful disconnect. CREDITS I (MJC) wrote the original kernel driver from scratch. Laurence Culhane and Fred van Kempen's slip.c was priceless as a model (a perusal of the files will reveal that I often mimicked what slip.c did). Otherwise I just implemented what pppd needs, using RFC1331 as a guide. For the most part, the Linux driver provides the same interface as the free 386BSD and SunOS drivers. The exception is that Linux has no support for asynchronous I/O, so I hacked an ioctl into the PPP kernel module that provides a signal when packets appear and made pppd use this instead. Al Longyear ported version 2.2 of pppd (from the free package ppp-2.2.0) to Linux. He also provided several enhancements to both the kernel driver and the OS-independent part of pppd. His contributions to Linux PPP have been immense, and so this release is being distributed over both our names. The pppd program comes from the free distribution of PPP for Suns and 386BSD machines, maintained by Paul Mackerras. This package lists "thanks to" Brad Parker, Greg Christy, Drew D. Perkins, Rick Adams and Chris Torek. Jim Freeman added the code to support a ppp module and to dynamically extend the number of ppp devices. All ppp devices listed in the Space.c will be unlinked when the kernel is loaded. This feature makes the use of '16 channel' support obsolete. CHANGES FROM THE PREVIOUS VERSION - The number of devices for the PPP device has been made dynamic. It was previously configured with the default value of four devices. - The problems dealing with other systems such as Windows NT and their authenticiation has been corrected. It will now generate the proper responses to allow the system to choose a valid authentication protocol. - The kernel debug value has changed. Previously it was a level. It is now a bit map with various bits meaning certain types of debug information. 0 - No debug information is generated 1 - Debug messages 2 - Log incoming packets 4 - Log outgoing packets 8 - Log tty output buffers 16 - Log tty input buffers If you wish to use any combination, add the values together. For example, '7' will log debug messages and incoming packages and outgoing packets. The default setting is 0. The simple IP trace which ppp.c performed when 'kdebug' was greater than 127 has been removed. You should use tcpdump for this type of trace actions. - Support is added for compression control protocol. At the present time only the BSD-Compress compression protocol is supported. - There are two queues for output frames. This avoids some problems which occured with the previous version and some PPP packages which exchanged echo frames with Linux. - The echo frames are now proper. Previously, it would generate extra characters and this caused some providers to not respond to the 'junk'. - The max-echo-failure option will now properly disconnect the line. - There are other changes which are listed in the general README file. Please read that file as well for changes. - There is no limit to the number of ppp devices which you may use. Jim Freeman has added code to create them upon demand and to re-use the ones which have been closed. There is no code, nor plans to write code, to remove (delete) the un-used devices. So, if your system goes to a spurt and uses 256 ppp devices, it will remain at that level until you next reload the kernel. If you are using modules then you may use the additional setting of max_dev=# where # is the maximum number. The default is set by the define PPP_MAX_DEV and this define may be altered if you are not using modules. The BSD compressor may only be loaded as a module. Previous beta versions permitted the compressor to be included into the kernel. This was removed for several reasons, some technical, some less technical and more political (legal). FUTURE PLANS The next version of pppd, 2.3, is designed to contain a demand dial function directly. INSTALLATION This version of PPP has been tested on 1.1.x (x>=14) It will probably not work on kernels much earlier than this due to a change in the routing code. If you have an earlier kernel, please upgrade. joining the PPP channel of linux-activists: This isn't really part of installation, but if you DO use Linux PPP you should do this. Send a message with the line subscribe linux-ppp contained in the body to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu You may use subscribe linux-ppp myname@mail.address if you wish the linux-ppp information sent to a different mail address. To leave the mail list, send 'unsubscribe linux-ppp' to the same mail address. You can send to the list by mailing to linux-ppp@vger.rutgers.edu. This is a majordomo mailing list and is unlike the earlier version on hut.fi. There is no magic header required for this list. In addition, it is gated to the usenet group linux.dev.ppp. You may choose to read the few messages posted there. Usenet News Groups There are three applicable usenet news groups for the PPP code. Please choose the group which applies the closest to the type of problem which you are experiencing. comp.os.linux.networking - Trouble setting routes, running name services, using telnet, ftp, news, etc. - It will not compile. comp.os.linux.setup - Trouble installing the package from BINARIES only. This does *NOT* include problems with compiling the package. comp.protocols.ppp - How do I use the package? - How do I connect to .... services? - Why does this not work? - All other types of questions on how to use just the PPP code. PLEASE don't assume that just because you are using PPP as your network device driver that all problems with your networking are a problem of PPP. PPP is *NOT* responsible for your modem disconnecting, routing to other servers, running telnet, etc. Calling the problem 'ppp' on usenet may cause it to be ignored by the people who actually work on the networking code. Installation procedure: The installation procedure has been totally revised for this version. Due to feedback from other users, it was felt that a more automated installation procedure be performed. Use the following procedure for all kernel versions. There are six steps numbered one through six. Please do them in order and not skip one. 1. Issue the command: ./configure from the top level directory of pppd. This is the directory which contains this README.linux file. The result of this will be to build a set of symbolic links to the makefiles. They should link 'Makefile' to 'Makefile.linux' in each of the directories. 2. Issue the command: make kernel from the top level directory. This will install the various include files and source files into the proper directory for the linux kernel. If you don't have the kernel installed in the /usr/src/kernel directory then it will not work. Instead it will print a message to the effect that you need to specify the kernel location on the kinstall command. The actual message will say: There appears to be no kernel source distribution in /usr/src/linux. Give the top-level kernel source directory as the argument to this script. usage: kinstall.sh [linux-source-directory] If, and only if, you receive this message, do the following: a. Change to the 'linux' directory with the command: cd linux b. Issue the command: ./kinstall.sh /usr/src/linux or use the proper location for the kernel rather than /usr/src/linux. For example, if you have the kernel installed in /usr1/kernel then the command would be: ./kinstall.sh /usr1/kernel The script will validate that the kernel is properly installed into that directory and check the level of the kernel. The installation will not be accepted if your kernel is too early. The installation procedure will copy only the files which are needed. It will not replace any file which should not be replaced. Please don't second-guess the installation script and attempt to do the procedure on your own. There are some very subtle dependencies and if you are not careful, the installation will not work. You are free to run the installation script as many times as you wish. The additional executions will only change the files which have not been changed. 3. Build the kernel. You must rebuild the kernel with this package. The driver is totally new and will not work with the older daemon and the newer daemon will not work with the older kernel driver. If you don't know how to build a kernel, then you should read the README file in the kernel source directory. If you wish module support then you need to have the 'modules-1.1.87' package installed as the minimum version. Earlier versions of the module support will not work properly. As of this time, the current version for the modules package is 1.2.0. Even 1.1.87 is old. However, if you only have 1.1.87 then it will do as it permits the symbol table references. Please consider upgrading the module package however. Instructions on building the kernel with modules are given in the README.modules in the kernel source directory. 4. Install the kernel If you are using the Yggdrasil distribution then you need to 'install' the kernel at this point. Refer to their documentation on the procedures to install the kernel. Distributions other than the Yggdrasil will normally install the kernel when you build it. 5. Build the programs. The programs are built next. The command to build the programs is fairly simple. Just issue the command: make from the top level directory where this README.linux file is located. 6. Install the programs. You may use the command make install to install the various programs. They will be installed into the /usr/lib/ppp directory. You may not like this directory for the executables. The directory name is called BINDIR and is set in the file 'linux/Makefile.linux'. 7. Reboot to the new kernel. After building the new kernel, you will need to actually use it. Reboot the Linux system and you may then use the new pppd program. 8. Load optional modules. If you are using loadable modules for the ppp then you must load them after the kernel has been started. The following relative order must be maintained. Sequence Module Description 1 slhc.o VJ header compression 2 ppp.o PPP driver 3 bsd_comp.o BSD compression for PPP's compression protocol. If you only have the bsd comprssor as a module then you may load it without regard to any order. You may elect not to load the BSD compression module if you desire. There is a controversy regarding a Motorola software patent and while it is believed that this code does not infringe upon the patent, it is however an optional component. In addition, if memory is a premium, do not run the BSD compression. It may take large amounts of memory (up to 2.6 meg) for high compression lengths to hold the compression dictionaries. Without the BSD compression module, the PPP driver will not accept PPP's compression control protocol for BSD compression. PROBLEMS WHICH MAY OCCUR WHILE BUILDING THE KERNEL A REFERENCE TO UNDEFINED _mod_use_count_ If you experience an error message that the variable "mod_use_count_" is undefined then apply the patches in the linux/Other.Patches directory. There is a version for the 1.2.13 kernel and a differnt one for the early 1.3 kernels. The current 1.3 series kernels should not experience this problem as the patch has already been incorporated. BLOCK ON FREELIST AT nnnnnn ISN'T FREE (where nnnnnn are a sequence of hexadecimal digits.) While this is not really an error when the kernel is built, it is an error which may occur when you actually run the system. The solution is a patch in the linux/Other.Patches directory. (That is why I mention it here.) The problem is in the VJ header compression module. It allocated a block of memory and then used the wrong variable to determine the amount of memory which should be reset. The patch is present in the 1.3.46 kernel and later ones. However, versions prior to that may POSSIBLY have the problem depending upon the number of slots which are allocated for the header compression logic. GENERAL NETWORK CONFIGURATION Since many people don't use the Linux networking code at all until they get a PPP link, this section describes generally what's needed to get things running. In principle none of this is special to PPP. For more details, you should consult the relevant Linux HOWTOs. If you already understand network setup, you can skip this section. The first file that requires attention is the rc script that does network configuration at boot time, called /etc/rc.net or /etc/rc.d/rc.net.{1,2} or something similar, depending on your Linux distribution. This file should 'ifconfig' the loopback interface lo, and should add an interface route for it. These lines might look something like this: $CONFIG lo 127.0.0.1 $ROUTE add loopback or /sbin/ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 /sbin/route add 127.0.0.1 However, it should *not* config an ethernet card or install any other routes (unless you actually have an ethernet card, in which case I'll assume you know what to do). Many distributions will provide scripts that expect you to have an ethernet card. You also need to decide whether you want to allow incoming telnet/ftp/finger, etc. If so, you should have the rc startup script run the 'inetd' daemon. Next, you should set up /etc/hosts to have two lines. The first should just give the loopback or localhost address and the second should give your own host name and the IP address your PPP connection will use. For example: 127.0.0.1 loopback localhost # useful aliases 192.1.1.17 billpc.president.whitehouse.gov bill # my hostname 192.1.1.23 chelseapc.president.whitehouse.gov chelseapc where my IP address is 192.1.1.17 and my hostname is billpc.president.whitehouse.gov. (Not really, you understand.) If your PPP server does dynamic IP address assignment, give a guess as to an address you might get (see also "Dynamic Address Assignment" below). Finally, you need to configure the domain name system by putting appropriate lines in /etc/resolv.conf . It should look something like this: domain president.whitehouse.gov search president.whitehouse.gov whitehouse.gov nameserver 192.1.2.1 nameserver 192.1.2.10 Assuming there are nameservers at 192.1.2.1 and 192.1.2.10, then when you get connected with PPP, you can reach hosts whose full names are 'hillarypc.president.whitehouse.gov' and 'chelseapc.whitehouse.gov' by the names 'hillarypc' and 'chelseapc'. You can probably find out the right domain name to use and the IP numbers of nameservers from whoever's providing your PPP link. CONNECTING TO A PPP SERVER To use PPP, you invoke the pppd program with appropriate options. Everything you need to know is contained in the pppd(8) manual page. However, it's useful to see some examples: Example 1: A simple dial-up connection. Here's a command for connecting to a PPP server by modem. pppd connect 'chat -v "" ATDT5551212 CONNECT "" ogin: ppp word: whitewater' \ /dev/cua1 38400 debug crtscts modem defaultroute 192.1.1.17 Going through pppd's options in order: connect 'chat etc...' This gives a command to run to contact the PPP server. Here the supplied 'chat' program is used to dial a remote computer. The whole command is enclosed in single quotes because pppd expects a one-word argument for the 'connect' option. The options to 'chat' itself are: -v verbose mode; log what we do to syslog "" don't wait for any prompt, but instead... ATDT5551212 dial the modem, then CONNECT wait for answer "" send a return (null text followed by usual return) ogin: ppp word: whitewater log in. /dev/cua1 specify the callout serial port cua1 38400 specify baud rate debug log status in syslog crtscts use hardware flow control between computer and modem (at 38400 this is a must) modem indicate that this is a modem device; pppd will hang up the phone before and after making the call defaultroute once the PPP link is established, make it the default route; if you have a PPP link to the Internet this is probably what you want 192.1.1.17 this is a degenerate case of a general option of the form x.x.x.x:y.y.y.y . Here x.x.x.x is the local IP address and y.y.y.y is the IP address of the remote end of the PPP connection. If this option is not specified, or if just one side is specified, then x.x.x.x defaults to the IP address associated with the local machine's hostname (in /etc/hosts), and y.y.y.y is determined by the remote machine. So if this example had been taken from the fictional machine 'billpc', this option would actually be redundant. pppd will write error messages and debugging logs to the syslogd daemon using the facility name "daemon". These messages may already be logged to the console or to a file like /usr/adm/messages; consult your /etc/syslog.conf file to see. If you want to make all pppd messages go to the console, add the line daemon.* /dev/console ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is one or more tabs. Do not use spaces. to syslog.conf; make sure to put one or more TAB characters between the two fields. Example 2: Connecting to PPP server over hard-wired link. This is a slightly more complicated example. This is the script I run to make my own PPP link, which is over a hard-wired Gandalf link to an Ultrix machine running Morningstar PPP. pppd connect /etc/ppp/ppp-connect defaultroute noipdefault debug \ kdebug 0 /dev/cua0 9600 Here /etc/ppp/ppp-connect is the following script: #!/bin/sh /etc/ppp/sendbreak chat -v -t60 "" \; "service :" blackice ogin: callahan word: PASSWORD \ black% "stty -echo; ppp" "Starting PPP now" && sleep 5 This sends a break to wake up my terminal server, sends a semicolon (which lets my terminal server do autobaud detection), then says we want the service "blackice". It logs in, waits for a shell prompt ("black%"), then starts PPP. The -t60 argument sets the timeout to a minute, since things here are sometimes very slow. The "&& sleep 5" causes the script to pause for 5 seconds, unless chat fails in which case it exits immediately. This is just to give the PPP server time to start (it's very slow). Also, the "stty -echo" turned out to be very important for me; without it, my pppd would sometimes start to send negotiation packets before the remote PPP server had time to turn off echoing. The negotiation packets would then get sent back to my local machine, be rejected (PPP is able to detect loopback) and pppd would fail before the remote PPP server even got going. The "stty -echo" command prevents this confusion. This kind of problem should only ever affect a *very* few people who connect to a PPP server that runs as a command on a slow Unix machine, but I wanted to mention it because it took me several frustrating hours to figure out. The pppd options are mostly familiar. Two that are new are "noipdefault" and "kdebug 1". "noipdefault" tells pppd to ask the remote end for the IP address to use; this is necessary if the PPP server implements dynamic IP address assignment as mine does (i.e., I don't know what address I'll get ahead of time). "kdebug 1" sets the kernel debugging level to 1, enabling slightly chattier messages from the ppp kernel code. Anyway, assuming your connection is working, you should see chat dial the modem, then perhaps some messages from pppd (depending on your syslog.conf setup), then some kernel messages like this: ppp: channel ppp0 mtu changed to 1500 ppp: channel ppp0 open ppp: channel ppp0 going up for IP packets! (These messages will only appear if you gave the option "kdebug 1" and have kern.info messages directed to the screen.) Simultaneously, pppd is also writing interesting things to /usr/adm/messages (or other log file, depending on syslog.conf). IF IT WORKS If you think you've got a connection, there are a number of things you can do to test it. First, type /sbin/ifconfig (ifconfig may live elsewhere, depending on your distribution.) This should show you all the network interfaces that are 'UP'. ppp0 should be one of them, and you should recognize the first IP address as your own and the "P-t-P address" (or point-to-point address) the address of your server. Here's what it looks like on my machine: lo Link encap Local Loopback inet addr 127.0.0.1 Bcast 127.255.255.255 Mask 255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU 2000 Metric 1 RX packets 0 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0 TX packets 0 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0 ppp0 Link encap Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr 192.76.32.2 P-t-P 129.67.1.165 Mask 255.255.255.0 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING MTU 1500 Metric 1 RX packets 33 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0 TX packets 42 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0 Now, type ping z.z.z.z where z.z.z.z is the address of your name server. This should work. Here's what it looks like for me: waddington:~$ ping 129.67.1.165 PING 129.67.1.165 (129.67.1.165): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 129.67.1.165: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=268 ms 64 bytes from 129.67.1.165: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=247 ms 64 bytes from 129.67.1.165: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=266 ms ^C --- 129.67.1.165 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 247/260/268 ms waddington:~$ Try typing: netstat -nr This should show three routes, something like this: Kernel routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 129.67.1.165 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 6 ppp0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo 0.0.0.0 129.67.1.165 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 6298 ppp0 If your output looks similar but doesn't have the destination 0.0.0.0 line (which refers to the default route used for connections), you may have run pppd without the 'defaultroute' option. At this point you can try telnetting/ftping/fingering whereever you want, bearing in mind that you'll have to use numeric IP addresses unless you've set up your /etc/resolv.conf correctly. IF IT DOESN'T WORK If you don't seem to get a connection, the thing to do is to collect 'debug' output from pppd. To do this, make sure you run pppd with the 'debug' option, and put the following two lines in your /etc/syslog.conf file: daemon.* /dev/console daemon.* /usr/adm/ppplog This will cause pppd's messages to be written to the current virtual console and to the file /usr/adm/ppplog. Note that the left-hand field and the right-hand field must be separated by at least one TAB character. After modifying /etc/syslog.conf, you must execute the command 'kill -HUP ' where is the process ID of the currently running syslogd process to cause it to re-read the configuration file. Some messages to look for: - "pppd[NNN]: Connected..." means that the "connect" script has completed successfully. - "pppd[NNN]: sent [LCP ConfReq"... means that pppd has attempted to begin negotiation with the remote end. - "pppd[NNN]: recv [LCP ConfReq"... means that pppd has received a negotiation frame from the remote end. - "pppd[NNN]: ipcp up" means that pppd has reached the point where it believes the link is ready for IP traffic to travel across it. If you never see a "recv" message then there may be serious problems with your link. (For example, the link may not be passing all 8 bits.) If that's the case, it would be useful to collect a debug log which contains all the bytes being passed between your computer and the remote PPP server. To do this, alter your syslog.conf lines to look like this daemon.*,kern.* /dev/console daemon.*,kern.* /usr/adm/ppplog and HUP the syslog daemon as before. Then, run pppd with the option "kdebug 25". Whatever characters arrive over the PPP terminal line will appear in the debugging output. Occasionally you may see a message like ppp_toss: tossing frame, reason = 4 The PPP code is throwing away a packet ("frame") from the remote server because of a serial overrun. This means your CPU isn't able to read characters from the serial port as quickly as they arrive; the best solution is to get a 16550A serial chip, which gives the CPU some grace period. Reasons other than 4 indicate other kinds of serial errors, which should not occur. During the initial connection sequence, you may see one or more messages which indicate "bad fcs". This refers to a checksum error in a received PPP frame, and usually occurs at the start of a session when the peer system is sending some "text" messages, such as "hello this is the XYZ company". Messages of "bad fcs" once the link is established and the routes have been added are not normal and indicate transmission errors or noise on the telephone line. IF IT STILL DOESN'T WORK (OR, BUG REPORTS) If you're still having difficulty, send the linux-ppp list a bug report. It is extremely important to include as much information as possible; for example: - the version number of the kernel you are using - the version number of Linux PPP you are using - the exact command you use to start the PPP session - log output from a session run with the 'debug' option, captured using daemon.*,kern.* in your syslog.conf file - the type of PPP peer that you are connecting to (eg, Xyzzy Corp terminal server, Morningstar PPP software, etc) - the kind of connection you use (modem, hardwired, etc...) DYNAMIC ADDRESS ASSIGNMENT You can use Linux PPP with a PPP server which assigns a different IP address every time you connect. This action is automatically performed when you don't have a local IP address. pppd connect 'chat -v "" ATDT5551212 CONNECT "" ogin: ppp word: whitewater' \ /dev/cua1 38400 noipdefault debug crtscts modem defaultroute The noipdefault, added to the above example, suppresses the attempts of pppd to deduce its own IP address by looking it up in the /etc/hosts file. Since the process does not have an IP address, one will be assigned to it from the configuration file on the remote system. Sometimes you may get an error message like "Cannot assign requested address" when you use a Linux client (for example, "talk"). This happens when the IP address given in /etc/hosts for our hostname differs from the IP address used by the PPP interface. The solution is to use ifconfig ppp0 to get the interface address and then edit /etc/hosts appropriately. SETTING UP A MACHINE FOR INCOMING PPP CONNECTIONS Suppose you want to permit another machine to call yours up and start a PPP session. This is possible using Linux PPP. One way is to create an account named, say, 'ppp', with the login shell being a short script that starts pppd. For example, the passwd entry might look like this: ppp:(encrypted password):102:50:PPP client login:/home/ppp:/usr/sbin/pppd In addition, you would edit the file ~ppp/.ppprc to have the following pieces of information: -detach modem crtscts lock :192.1.2.23 Here we will insist that the remote machine use IP address 192.1.2.23, while the local PPP interface will use the IP address associated with this machine's hostname in /etc/hosts. The '-detach' option is required for a server. It tells the pppd process not to terminate until the modem is disconnected. Should it fork, the init process would restart the getty process and the this would cause a severe conflict over the port. The 'modem' option indicates that the connection is via a switched circuit (using a modem) and that the pppd process should monitor the DCD signal from the modem. The 'crtscts' option tells the pppd process to use hardware RTS/CTS flow control for the modem. The 'lock' option tells pppd to lock the tty device. This will use the UUCP style locking file in the lock directory. This setup is sufficient if you just want to connect two machines so that they can talk to one another. If you want to use Linux PPP to connect a single machine to an entire network, or to connect two networks together, then you need to arrange for packets to be routed from the networks to the PPP link. Setting up a link between networks is beyond the scope of this document; you should examine the routing options in the manual page for pppd carefully and find out about routed, etc. Let's consider just the first case. Suppose you have a Linux machine attached to an Ethernet, and you want to allow its PPP peer to be able to communicate with hosts on that Ethernet. To do this, you should have the remote machine use an IP address that would normally appear to be on the local Ethernet segment and you should give the 'proxyarp' option to pppd on the server. Suppose, for example, we have this setup: 192.1.2.23 192.1.2.17 +-----------+ PPP link +----------+ | chelseapc | ------------------- | billpc | +-----------+ +----------+ | Ethernet ----------------------------------- 192.1.2.x Here the PPP and Ethernet interfaces of billpc will have IP address 192.1.2.17. (It's OK for one or more PPP interfaces on a machine to share an IP address with an Ethernet interface.) There is an appropriate entry in /etc/passwd on billpc to allow chelseapc to call in. It will run pppd when the user signs on to the system and pppd will take the options from the user option file. In addition, you would edit the file ~ppp/.ppprc to have the following piece of information: -detach modem crtscts lock 192.1.2.17:192.1.2.23 proxyarp When the link comes up, pppd will enter a "proxy arp" entry for chelseapc into the arp table on billpc. What this means effectively is that billpc will pretend to the other machines on the 192.1.2.x Ethernet that its Ethernet interface is ALSO the interface for chelseapc (192.1.2.23) as well as billpc (192.1.2.17). In practice this means that chelseapc can communicate just as if it was directly connected to the Ethernet. SETTING UP A MACHINE FOR INCOMING PPP CONNECTIONS WITH DYNAMIC IP The use of dynamic IP assignments is not much different from that using static IP addresses. Rather than putting the IP address into the single file ~ppp/.ppprc, you would put the IP address for each of the incoming terminals into the /etc/ppp/options.tty files. ('tty' is the name of the tty device. For example /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0 is used for the /dev/ttyS0 device.) To each of the serial devices, you would attach a modem. To the modems, attach the telephone lines. Place all of the telephone lines into a hunt group so that the telephone system will select the non-busy telephone and subsequently, the modem. By selecting the modem, the user will select a tty device and the tty device will select the IP address. Run a getty process against the tty device such as /dev/ttyS0. (The general consensus among the users is that you should *not* use the agetty process to monitor a modem. Use either getty_ps' uugetty process or mgetty from the mgetty+sendfax package.) SECURITY CONCERNS ABOUT INCOMING PPP CONNECTIONS The following security should be considered with the ppp connections. 1. Never put the pppd program file into the /etc/shells file. It is not a legal shell for the general user. In addition, if the shell is missing from the shells file, the ftpd process will not allow the user to access the system via ftp. You would not want Joe Hacker using the ppp account via ftp. 2. Ensure that the directory /etc/ppp is owned by 'root' and permits only write access to the root user. 3. The files /etc/ppp/options must be owned by root and accessible only from that user. Never permit any other user access to this file. 4. The files /etc/ppp/ip-up and /etc/ppp/ip-down will be executed by the pppd process while it is root. Ensure that these files are writable only from the root user. 5. If you use an incoming PPP connection, you should do the following as the root user: a) Invalidate the files for rhosts and forward rm -f ~ppp/.rhosts ~ppp/.forward touch ~ppp/.rhosts ~ppp/.forward chmod 444 ~ppp/.rhosts ~ppp/.forward b) Prevent users from sending mail to the user 'ppp'. This is best performed by creating a system alias 'ppp' and have it point to the name "THIS_USER_CANNOT_RECEIVE_MAIL". It has no special meaning other than the obvious one. For sendmail, the sequence is fairly easy. Edit the /etc/aliases file and add the line: ppp:THIS_USER_CANNOT_RECEIVE_MAIL Then run the sendmail program with the option '-bi' to rebuild the alias database. c) Secure the ppp file properly. chown root ~ppp/.ppprc chmod 444 ~ppp/.ppprc You may wish to extend the security by creating a group 'ppp' and putting the ppp user into that group, along with the binaries for pppd and pppstats. Then you may secure the binaries so that they are executable from the owner (which should be root) and the group only. All other users would be denied all access to the files and executables. d) Prevent the motd file from being sent to the ppp user. touch ~ppp/.hushlogin chown root ~ppp/.hushlogin chmod 444 ~ppp/.hushlogin ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Besides this document, additional information may be found in: - The file README in the source package - The PPP-HOWTO on sunsite.unc.edu - The Net-2-HOWTO on sunsite.unc.edu - The Network Administration Guide published by O'Rielly and Associates Please consult these sources of information should you have questions about the program. If you still can not find your answer then ask either the usenet news groups or the mail list. DIP SUPPORT The dip program used by Linux is not directly supported by the PPP package as such. Please don't ask the PPP porting group questions about dip. It does work in two areas. 1. If you use it as a parameter to 'connect' then you can use the scripting language and establish the connection. You would use the standard set of PPP options. 2. dip-3.3.7m-uri and later versions support a 'mode ppp' function which will invoke the pppd program. That is all that it does. It will not pass any parameters to pppd other than its required '-detach' to allow dip to detect the normal termination of pppd. The following information comes from John Phillips in an article which he posted to comp.os.linux.setup. Assuming that you already know how dip supports SLIP, these points are relative to a working SLIP set-up. 1. You need dip-3.3.7m-uri, and, of course, PPP compiled into the kernel. 2. Make sure pppd is where dip thinks it is: /usr/lib/ppp/pppd, or make a link from there to where pppd really is. (Or re-compile dip to tell it where pppd is on your system - see pathnames.h). 3. The key differences between the dip script for PPP, compared to one for SLIP are: a. Use "mode PPP" instead of "mode SLIP" b. Don't set certain options such as mtu and default - these are set by pppd from the file /etc/ppp/options. Mine looks like this: crtscts modem defaultroute asyncmap 0x00000000 mru 576 mtu 576 The actual parameters and values may depend on your IP supplier and his set-up. c. Tell your IP supplier's start-up code to use ppp, not slip: I use "send nolqm,idle=240\n" instead of "send slip,idle=240,mru=576\n" at the "protocol: " prompt. ("nolqm" asks for ppp without the line quality monitoring protocol, which is not - I think - supported in Linux PPP.) This prompt may be different (or absent) with another IP supplier. d. You don't need "get $local ", since the ppp protocol negotiates this at start-up. You still need "get $remote ". (This may also vary with IP supplier - you may need to set some more parameters in /etc/ppp/options to work with yours - see "man pppd" for details of the options supported by pppd.) 4. The dip script will exit after dialling and starting up pppd. When ppp negotiation is completed and IP comes up, pppd runs /etc/ppp/ip-up. This file can contain things you want to run when the network comes up (e.g. running the mail queue). 5. When IP goes down (e.g. after you close down the link with "dip -k"), pppd runs /etc/ppp/ip-down, which can contain things you want to do on close-down. CONCLUSION Good luck! Al and Michael