-This is the README file for ppp-2.4, a package which implements the
+This is the README file for ppp-2.5, a package which implements the
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) to provide Internet connections over
-serial lines.
+serial lines and other types of links which can be considered to be
+point-to-point links.
Introduction.
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 and Solaris ports of this package have optional support for
-IPV6; 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.
-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
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 platforms supported by this package are Linux and Solaris.
+(There is also code to support various old flavours of Unix in the git
+repository, but it is quite old and unmaintained.)
+
+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.
+
+Similarly, the kernel code for Solaris is no longer distributed with
+this package. See the Illumos web site for pointers to the kernel
+module source code and build environment.
+
+ https://www.illumos.org/
Installation.
authenticating itself to you, of course.)
-What's new in ppp-2.4.3.
-************************
-
-* 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.
-
-
-What was new in ppp-2.4.2.
-**************************
-
-* 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.
-
-* 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.)
-
-* James Carlson's implementation of the Extensible Authentication
- Protocol (EAP) has been added.
+What's new in ppp-2.5.2
+***********************
-* Support for the Encryption Control Protocol (ECP) has been added.
+* Some old and probably unused code has been removed, notably the
+ pppgetpass program and the passprompt plugin, and some of the files
+ in the sample and scripts directories.
-* 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.
+* If a remote number has been set, it is available to scripts in the
+ REMOTENUMBER environment variable.
-* Updates and bug-fixes for the Solaris port.
+* The Solaris port has been updated, including updated installation
+ instructions in README.sol2.
-* The CBCP (Call Back Control Protocol) code has been updated. There
- are new options `remotenumber' and `allow-number'.
+* Various other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
-* Extra hooks for plugins to use have been added.
-* 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.
+What was new in ppp-2.5.1
+*************************
-* 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'.
+* The files copied to /etc/ppp (or <sysconfdir>/ppp) now have
+ ".example" appended to their filenames, so as to indicate that they
+ are just examples, and to avoid overwriting existing configuration
+ files.
-* Fixed several bugs, including potential buffer overflows in chat.
+* Pppd can now measure and log the round-trip time (RTT) of LCP
+ echo-requests and record them in a binary file structured as a
+ circular buffer. Other programs or scripts can examine the file and
+ provide real-time statistics on link latency. This is enabled by a
+ new "lcp-rtt-file" option.
+* New scripts net-init, net-pre-up and net-down are executed in the
+ process of bringing the network interface up and down. They provide
+ additional, more deterministic ways for pppd to interact with the
+ rest of the networking configuration.
-What was new in ppp-2.4.1.
-**************************
-
-* 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.
+* New options have been added to allow the system administrator to
+ set the location of various scripts and secrets files.
-* 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.
+* A new "noresolvconf" option tells pppd not to write the
+ /etc/ppp/resolv.conf file; DNS server addresses, if obtained from
+ the peer, are still passed to scripts in the environment.
-* 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.
+* Pppd will now create the directory for the TDB connection database
+ if it doesn't already exist.
-* 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;
+* Kernel module code for Solaris is no longer included.
-* 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.
+* Support for decompressing compressed packets has been removed from
+ pppdump, because the zlib code used was old and potentially
+ vulnerable.
-* Pppd should compile on Solaris and SunOS again.
+* Some old code has been removed.
-* Pppd should now set the MTU correctly on demand-dialled interfaces.
+* Various other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
-What was new in ppp-2.4.0.
+What was new in ppp-2.5.0.
**************************
-* 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.
+The 2.5.0 release is a major release of pppd which contains breaking
+changes for third-party plugins, a complete revamp of the build-system
+and that allows for flexibility of configuring features as needed.
+
+In Summary:
+* Support for PEAP authentication by Eivind Næss and Rustam Kovhaev
+* Support for loading PKCS12 certificate envelopes
+* Adoption of GNU Autoconf / Automake build environment, by Eivind Næss
+ and others.
+* Support for pkgconfig tool has been added by Eivind Næss.
+* Bunch of fixes and cleanup to PPPoE and IPv6 support by Pali Rohár.
+* Major revision to PPPD's Plugin API by Eivind Næss.
+ - Defines in which describes what features was included in pppd
+ - Functions now prefixed with explicit ppp_* to indicate that
+ pppd functions being called.
+ - Header files were renamed to better align with their features,
+ and now use proper include guards
+ - A pppdconf.h file is supplied to allow third-party modules to use
+ the same feature defines pppd was compiled with.
+ - No extern declarations of internal variable names of pppd,
+ continued use of these extern variables are considered
+ unstable.
+* Lots of internal fixes and cleanups for Radius and PPPoE by Jaco Kroon
+* Dropped IPX support, as Linux has dropped support in version 5.15
+ for this protocol.
+* Many more fixes and cleanups.
+* Pppd is no longer installed setuid-root.
+* New pppd options:
+ - ipv6cp-noremote, ipv6cp-nosend, ipv6cp-use-remotenumber,
+ ipv6-up-script, ipv6-down-script
+ - -v, show-options
+ - usepeerwins, ipcp-no-address, ipcp-no-addresses, nosendip
+* On Linux, any baud rate can be set on a serial port provided the
+ kernel serial driver supports that.
+
+Note that if you have built and installed previous versions of this
+package and you want to continue having configuration and TDB files in
+/etc/ppp, you will need to use the --sysconfdir option to ./configure.
+
+For a list of the changes made during the 2.4 series releases of this
+package, see the Changes-2.4 file.
Compression methods.
ever expand packets.
-Patents.
-********
-
-The BSD-Compress algorithm used for packet compression is the same as
-that used in the Unix "compress" command. It was 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). I believe the Unisys patent expired in the US on 20 June
-2003, and that the IBM patent was older.
-
-If these patents are of concern in your situation, 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.
-
-
Contacts.
*********
-The comp.protocols.ppp newsgroup is a useful place to get help if you
-have trouble getting your ppp connections to work. Please do not send
-me questions of the form "please help me get connected to my ISP" -
-I'm sorry, but I simply do not have the time to answer all the
-questions like this that I get.
+Most communication relating to this package happens on github at
+https://github.com/ppp-project/ppp/. The linux-ppp@vger.kernel.org
+mailing list also exists and can be used.
-If you find bugs in this package, please report them to the maintainer
-for the port for the operating system you are using:
+If you find bugs in this package, the best thing to do is to create an
+issue on github. If you can't or don't want to do that, you can post
+to linux-ppp@vger.kernel.org, or report them to the maintainer for the
+port for the operating system you are using:
-Linux Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
-Solaris James Carlson <carlson@workingcode.com>
+Linux Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>
+Solaris James Carlson <carlsonj@workingcode.com>
Copyrights:
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.
+pppd plugins are GPL'd. Chat has an MIT licence notice.
Distribution:
ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/
-($Id: README,v 1.31 2004/11/04 11:58:14 paulus Exp $)
projects / ppp.git / blobdiff