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+This is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about using ppp-2.x and
+their answers.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: Can you give me an example of how I might set up my machine to dial
+out to an ISP?
+
+A: Here's an example for dialling out to an ISP via a modem on
+/dev/tty02. The modem uses hardware (CTS/RTS) flow control, and the
+serial port is run at 38400 baud. The ISP assigns our IP address.
+
+To configure pppd for this connection, create a file under
+/etc/ppp/peers called (say) my-isp containing the following:
+
+tty02 crtscts 38400
+connect 'chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat/my-isp'
+defaultroute
+
+The ppp connection is then initiated using the following command:
+
+pppd call my-isp
+
+Of course, if the directory containing pppd is not in your path, you
+will need to give the full pathname for pppd, for example,
+/usr/sbin/pppd.
+
+When you run this, pppd will use the chat program to dial the ISP and
+invoke its ppp service. Chat will read the file specified with -f,
+namely /etc/ppp/chat/my-isp, to find a list of strings to expect to
+receive, and strings to send. This file would contain something like
+this:
+
+ABORT "NO CARRIER"
+ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
+ABORT "ERROR"
+ABORT "NO ANSWER"
+ABORT "BUSY"
+ABORT "Username/Password Incorrect"
+"" "at"
+OK "at&d2&c1"
+OK "atdt2479381"
+"name:" "^Uusername"
+"word:" "\qpassword"
+"annex" "\q^Uppp"
+"Switching to PPP-ppp-Switching to PPP"
+
+You will need to change the details here. The first string on each
+line is a string to expect to receive; the second is the string to
+send. You can add or delete lines according to the dialog required to
+access your ISP's system. This example is for a modem with a standard
+AT command set, dialling out to an Annex terminal server. The \q
+toggles "quiet" mode; when quiet mode is on, the strings to be sent
+are replaced by ?????? in the log. You may need to go through the
+dialog manually using kermit or tip first to determine what should go
+in the script.
+
+To terminate the link, run the following script, called (say)
+kill-ppp:
+
+#!/bin/sh
+unit=ppp${1-0}
+piddir=/var/run
+if [ -f $piddir/$unit.pid ]; then
+ kill -1 `cat $piddir/$unit.pid`
+fi
+
+On some systems (SunOS, Solaris, Ultrix), you will need to change
+/var/run to /etc/ppp.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: Can you give me an example of how I could set up my office machine
+so I can dial in to it from home?
+
+A: Let's assume that the office machine is called "office" and is on a
+local ethernet subnet. Call the home machine "home" and give it an IP
+address on the same subnet as "office". We'll require both machines
+to authenticate themselves to each other.
+
+Set up the files on "office" as follows:
+
+/etc/ppp/options contains:
+
+auth # require the peer to authenticate itself
+lock
+# other options can go here if desired
+
+/etc/ppp/chap-secrets contains:
+
+home office "beware the frub-jub" home
+office home "bird, my son!%&*" -
+
+Set up a modem on a serial port so that users can dial in to the
+modem and get a login prompt.
+
+On "home", set up the files as follows:
+
+/etc/ppp/options contains the same as on "office".
+
+/etc/ppp/chap-secrets contains:
+
+home office "beware the frub-jub" -
+office home "bird, my son!%&*" office
+
+Create a file called /etc/ppp/peers/office containing the following:
+
+tty02 crtscts 38400
+connect 'chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat/office'
+defaultroute
+
+(You may need to change some of the details here.)
+
+Create the /etc/ppp/chat/office file containing the following:
+
+ABORT "NO CARRIER"
+ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
+ABORT "ERROR"
+ABORT "NO ANSWER"
+ABORT "BUSY"
+ABORT "ogin incorrect"
+"" "at"
+OK "at&d2&c1"
+OK "atdt2479381"
+"name:" "^Uusername"
+"word:" "\qpassword"
+"$" "\q^U/usr/sbin/pppd proxyarp"
+"~"
+
+You will need to change the details. Note that the "$" in the
+second-last line is expecting the shell prompt after a successful
+login - you may need to change it to "%" or something else.
+
+You then initiate the connection (from home) with the command:
+
+pppd call office
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: When I try to establish a connection, the modem successfully dials
+the remote system, but then hangs up a few seconds later. How do I
+find out what's going wrong?
+
+A: There are a number of possible problems here. The first thing to
+do is to ensure that pppd's messages are visible. Pppd uses the
+syslog facility to log messages which help to identify specific
+problems. Messages from pppd have facility "daemon" and levels
+ranging from "debug" to "error".
+
+Usually it is useful to see messages of level "notice" or higher on
+the console. To see these, find the line in /etc/syslog.conf which
+has /dev/console on the right-hand side, and add "daemon.notice" in
+the list on the left. The line will end up looking something like
+this:
+
+*.err;kern.debug;auth.notice;mail.crit;daemon.notice /dev/console
+
+Note that the whitespace is tabs, *not* spaces.
+
+If you are having problems, it may be useful to see messages of level
+"info" as well, in which case you would change "daemon.notice" to
+"daemon.info".
+
+In addition, it is useful to collect pppd's debugging output in a
+file - the debug option to pppd causes it to log the contents of all
+control packets sent and received in human-readable form. To do this,
+add a line like this to /etc/syslog.conf:
+
+daemon,local2.debug /etc/ppp/log
+
+and create an empty /etc/ppp/log file.
+
+When you change syslog.conf, you will need to send a HUP signal to
+syslogd to causes it to re-read syslog.conf. You can do this with a
+command like this (as root):
+
+ kill -HUP `cat /etc/syslogd.pid`
+
+(On some systems, you need to use /var/run/syslog.pid instead of
+/etc/syslogd.pid.)
+
+After setting up syslog like this, you can use the -v flag to chat and
+the `debug' option to pppd to get more information. Try initiating
+the connection again; when it fails, inspect /etc/ppp/log to see what
+happened and where the connection failed.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: When I try to establish a connection, I get an error message saying
+"Serial link is not 8-bit clean". Why?
+
+A: The most common cause is that your connection script hasn't
+successfully dialled out to the remote system and invoked ppp service
+there. Instead, pppd is talking to something (a shell or login
+process on the remote machine, or maybe just the modem) which is only
+outputting 7-bit characters.
+
+This can also arise with a modem which uses an AT command set if the
+dial command is issued before pppd is invoked, rather than within a
+connect script started by pppd. If the serial port is set to 7
+bits/character plus parity when the last AT command is issued, the
+modem serial port will be set to the same setting.
+
+Note that pppd *always* sets the local serial port to 8 bits per
+character, with no parity and 1 stop bit. So you shouldn't need to
+issue an stty command before invoking pppd.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: When I try to establish a connection, I get an error message saying
+"Serial line is looped back". Why?
+
+A: Probably your connection script hasn't successfully dialled out to
+the remote system and invoked ppp service there. Instead, pppd is
+talking to something which is just echoing back the characters it
+receives. The -v option to chat can help you find out what's going
+on. It can be useful to include "~" as the last expect string to
+chat, so chat won't return until it's seen the start of the first PPP
+frame from the remote system.
+
+Another possibility is that your phone connection has dropped for some
+obscure reason and the modem is echoing the characters it receives
+from your system.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: I installed pppd successfully, but when I try to run it, I get a
+message saying something like "peer authentication required but no
+authentication files accessible".
+
+A: When pppd is used on a machine which already has a connection to
+the Internet (or to be more precise, one which has a default route in
+its routing table), it will require all peers to authenticate
+themselves. The reason for this is that if you don't require
+authentication, you have a security hole, because the peer can
+basically choose any IP address it wants, even the IP address of some
+trusted host (for example, a host mentioned in some .rhosts file).
+
+On machines which don't have a default route, pppd does not require
+the peer to authenticate itself. The reason is that such machines
+would mostly be using pppd to dial out to an ISP which will refuse to
+authenticate itself. In that case the peer can use any IP address as
+long as the system does not already have a route to that address.
+For example, if you have a local ethernet network, the peer can't use
+an address on that network. (In fact it could if it authenticated
+itself and it was permitted to use that address by the pap-secrets or
+chap-secrets file.)
+
+There are 3 ways around the problem:
+
+1. If possible, arrange for the peer to authenticate itself, and
+create the necessary secrets files (/etc/ppp/pap-secrets and/or
+/etc/ppp/chap-secrets).
+
+2. If the peer refuses to authenticate itself, and will always be
+using the same IP address, or one of a small set of IP addresses, you
+can create an entry in the /etc/ppp/pap-secrets file like this:
+
+ "" * "" his-ip.his-domain his-other-ip.other-domain
+
+(that is, using the empty string for the client name and password
+fields). Of couse, you replace the 4th and following fields in the
+example above with the IP address(es) that the peer may use. You can
+use either hostnames or numeric IP addresses.
+
+3. You can add the `noauth' option to the /etc/ppp/options file.
+Pppd will then not ask the peer to authenticate itself. If you do
+this, I *strongly* recommend that you remove the set-uid bit from the
+permissions on the pppd executable, with a command like this:
+
+ chmod u-s /usr/sbin/pppd
+
+Then, an intruder could only use pppd maliciously if they had already
+become root, in which case they couldn't do any more damage using pppd
+than they could anyway.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: What do I need to put in the secrets files?
+
+A: Three things:
+ - secrets (i.e. passwords) to use for authenticating this host to
+ other hosts (i.e., for proving our identity to others);
+ - secrets which other hosts can use for authenticating themselves
+ to us (i.e., so that they can prove their identity to us); and
+ - information about which IP addresses other hosts may use, once
+ they have authenticated themselves.
+
+There are two authentication files: /etc/ppp/pap-secrets, which
+contains secrets for use with PAP (the Password Authentication
+Protocol), and /etc/ppp/chap-secrets, which contains secrets for use
+with CHAP (the Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol). Both
+files have the same simple format, which is as follows:
+
+- The file contains a series of entries, each of which contains a
+secret for authenticating one machine to another.
+
+- Each entry is contained on a single logical line. A logical line
+may be continued across several lines by placing a backslash (\) at
+the end of each line except the last.
+
+- Each entry has 3 or more fields, separated by whitespace (spaces
+and/or tabs). These fields are, in order:
+ * The name of the machine that is authenticating itself
+ (the "client").
+ * The name of the machine that is authenticating the client
+ (the "server").
+ * The secret to be used for authenticating that client to that
+ server. If this field begins with the at-sign `@', the rest
+ of the field is taken as the name of a file containing the
+ actual secret.
+ * The 4th and any following fields list the IP address(es)
+ that the client may use.
+
+- The file may contain comments, which begin with a `#' and continue
+to the end of the line.
+
+- Double quotes `"' should be used around a field if it contains
+characters with special significance, such as space, tab, `#', etc.
+
+- The backslash `\' may be used before characters with special
+significance (space, tab, `#', `\', etc.) to remove that significance.
+
+Some important points to note:
+
+* A machine can be *both* a "client" and a "server" for the purposes
+of authentication - this happens when both peers require the other to
+authenticate itself. So A would authenticate itself to B, and B would
+also authenticate itself to A (possibly using a different
+authentication protocol).
+
+* If both the "client" and the "server" are running ppp-2.x, they need
+to have a similar entry in the appropriate secrets file; the first two
+fields are *not* swapped on the client, compared to the server. So
+the client might have an entry like this:
+
+ ay bee "our little secret" -
+
+and the corresponding entry on the server could look like this:
+
+ ay bee "our little secret" 123.45.67.89
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: Explain about PAP and CHAP?
+
+PAP stands for the Password Authentication Protocol. With this
+protocol, the "client" (the machine that needs to authenticate itself)
+sends its name and a password, in clear text, to the "server". The
+server returns a message indicating whether the name and password are
+valid.
+
+CHAP stands for the Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol. It
+is designed to address some of the deficiencies and vulnerabilities of
+PAP. Like PAP, it is based on the client and server having a shared
+secret, but the secret is never passed in clear text over the link.
+Instead, the server sends a "challenge" - an arbitrary string of
+bytes, and the client must prove it knows the shared secret by
+generating a hash value from the challenge combined with the shared
+secret, and sending the hash value back to the server. The server
+also generates the hash value and compares it with the value received
+from the client.
+
+At a practical level, CHAP can be slightly easier to configure than
+PAP because the server sends its name with the challenge. Thus, when
+finding the appropriate secret in the secrets file, the client knows
+the server's name. In contrast, with PAP, the client has to find its
+password (i.e. the shared secret) before it has received anything from
+the server. Thus, it may be necessary to use the `remotename' option
+to pppd when using PAP authentication so that it can select the
+appropriate secret from /etc/ppp/pap-secrets.
+
+Microsoft also has a variant of CHAP which uses a different hashing
+arrangement from normal CHAP. There is a client-side implementation
+of Microsoft's CHAP in ppp-2.3; see README.MSCHAP80.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: When the modem hangs up, without the remote system having
+terminated the connection properly, pppd does not notice the hangup,
+but just keeps running. How do I get pppd to notice the hangup and
+exit?
+
+A: Pppd detects modem hangup by looking for an end-of-file indication
+from the serial driver, which should be generated when the CD (carrier
+detect) signal on the serial port is deasserted. For this to work:
+
+- The modem has to be set to assert CD when the connection is made and
+deassert it when the phone line hangs up. Usually the AT&C1 modem
+command sets this mode.
+
+- The cable from the modem to the serial port must connect the CD
+signal (on pin 8).
+
+- Some serial drivers have a "software carrier detect" mode, which
+must be *disabled*. The method of doing this varies between systems.
+Under SunOS, use the ttysoftcar command. Under NetBSD, edit /etc/ttys
+to remove the "softcar" flag from the line for the serial port, and
+run ttyflags.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: Why should I use PPP compression (BSD-Compress or Deflate) when my
+modem already does V.42 compression? Won't it slow the CPU down a
+lot?
+
+A: Using PPP compression is preferable, especially when using modems
+over phone lines, for the following reasons:
+
+- The V.42 compression in the modem isn't very strong - it's an LZW
+technique (same as BSD-Compress) with a 10, 11 or 12 bit code size.
+With BSD-Compress you can use a code size of up to 15 bits and get
+much better compression, or you can use Deflate and get even better
+compression ratios.
+
+- I have found that enabling V.42 compression in my 14.4k modem
+increases the round-trip time for a character to be sent, echoed and
+returned by around 40ms, from 160ms to 200ms (with error correction
+enabled). This is enough to make it feel less responsive on rlogin or
+telnet sessions. Using PPP compression adds less than 5ms (small
+enough that I couldn't measure it reliably). I admit my modem is a
+cheapie and other modems may well perform better.
+
+- While compression and decompression do require some CPU time, they
+reduce the amount of time spent in the serial driver to transmit a
+given amount of data. Many machines require an interrupt for each
+character sent or received, and the interrupt handler can take a
+significant amount of CPU time. So the increase in CPU load isn't as
+great as you might think. My measurements indicate that a system with
+a 33MHz 486 CPU should be able to do Deflate compression for serial
+link speeds of up to 100kb/s or more. It depends somewhat on the type
+of data, of course; for example, when compressing a string of nulls
+with Deflate, it's hard to get a high output data rate from the
+compressor, simply because it compresses strings of nulls so well that
+it has to eat a very large amount of input data to get each byte of
+output.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: I get messages saying "Unsupported protocol (...) received". What do
+these mean?
+
+A: If you only get one or two when pppd starts negotiating with the
+peer, they mean that the peer wanted to negotiate some PPP protocol
+that pppd doesn't understand. This doesn't represent a problem, it
+simply means that there is some functionality that the peer supports
+that pppd doesn't, so that functionality can't be used.
+
+If you get them sporadically while the link is operating, or if the
+protocol numbers (in parentheses) don't correspond to any valid PPP
+protocol that the peer might be using, then the problem is probably
+that characters are getting corrupted on the receive side, or that
+extra characters are being inserted into the receive stream somehow.
+If this is happening, most packets that get corrupted should get
+discarded by the FCS (Frame Check Sequence, a 16-bit CRC) check, but a
+small number may get through.
+
+One possibility may be that you are receiving broadcast messages on
+the remote system which are being sent over your serial link. Another
+possibility is that your modem is set for XON/XOFF (software) flow
+control and is inserting ^Q and ^S characters into the receive data
+stream.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: I get messages saying "Protocol-Reject for unsupported protocol ...".
+What do these mean?
+
+A: This is the other side of the previous question. If characters are
+getting corrupted on the way to the peer, or if your system is
+inserting extra bogus characters into the transmit data stream, the
+peer may send protocol-reject messages to you, resulting in the above
+message (since your pppd doesn't recognize the protocol number
+either.)
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: I get a message saying something like "ioctl(TIOCSETD): Operation
+not permitted". How do I fix this?
+
+A: This is because pppd is not running as root. If you have not
+installed pppd setuid-root, you will have to be root to run it. If
+you have installed pppd setuid-root and you still get this message, it
+is probably because your shell is using some other copy of pppd than
+the installed one - for example, if you are in the pppd directory
+where you've just built pppd and your $PATH has . before /usr/sbin (or
+wherever pppd gets installed).
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: Has your package been ported to HP/UX or IRIX or AIX?
+
+A: No. I don't have access to systems running HP/UX or AIX. No-one
+has volunteered to port it to HP/UX. I had someone who did a port for
+AIX 4.x, but who is no longer able to maintain it. And apparently AIX
+3.x is quite different, so it would need a separate port.
+
+IRIX includes a good PPP implementation in the standard distribution,
+as far as I know.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: Under SunOS 4, when I try to modload the ppp modules, I get the
+message "can't open /dev/vd: No such device".
+
+A: First check in /dev that there is an entry like this:
+
+crw-r--r-- 1 root 57, 0 Oct 2 1991 vd
+
+If not, make one (mknod /dev/vd c 57 0). If the problem still exists,
+probably your kernel has been configured without the vd driver
+included. The vd driver is needed for loadable module support.
+
+First, identify the config file that was used. When you boot your
+machine, or if you run /etc/dmesg, you'll see a line that looks
+something like this:
+
+SunOS Release 4.1.3_U1 (CAP_XBOX) #7: Thu Mar 21 15:31:56 EST 1996
+ ^^^^^^^^
+ this is the config file name
+
+The config file will be in the /sys/`arch -k`/conf directory (arch -k
+should return sun4m for a SparcStation 10, sun3x for a Sun 3/80,
+etc.). Look in there for a line saying "options VDDRV". If that line
+isn't present (or is commented out), add it (or uncomment it).
+
+You then need to rebuild the kernel as described in the SunOS
+manuals. Basically you need to run config and make like this:
+
+ /usr/etc/config CAP_XBOX
+ cd ../CAP_XBOX
+ make
+
+(replacing the string CAP_XBOX by the name of the config file for your
+kernel, of course).
+
+Then copy the new kernel to /:
+
+ mv /vmunix /vmunix.working
+ cp vmunix /
+
+and reboot. Modload should then work.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: I'm running Linux (or NetBSD or FreeBSD), and my system comes with
+PPP already. Should I consider installing this package? Why?
+
+A: The PPP that is already installed in your system is (or is derived
+from) some version of this PPP package. You can find out what version
+of this package is already installed with the command "pppd --help".
+If this is older than the latest version, you may wish to install the
+latest version so that you can take advantage of the new features or
+bug fixes.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: I'm running pppd in demand mode, and I find that pppd often dials
+out unnecessarily when I try to make a connection within my local
+machine or with a machine on my local LAN. What can I do about this?
+
+A: Very often the cause of this is that a program is trying to contact
+a nameserver to resolve a hostname, and the nameserver (specified in
+/etc/resolv.conf, usually) is on the far side of the ppp link. You
+can try executing a command such as `ping myhost' (where myhost is the
+name of the local machine, or some other machine on a local LAN), to
+see whether that starts the ppp link. If it does, check the setup of
+your /etc/hosts file to make sure you have the local machine and any
+hosts on your local LAN listed, and /etc/resolv.conf and/or
+/etc/nsswitch.conf files to make sure you resolve hostnames from
+/etc/hosts if possible before trying to contact a nameserver.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: Since I installed ppp-2.3.6, dialin users to my server have been
+getting this message when they run pppd:
+
+peer authentication required but no suitable secret(s) found for
+authenticating any peer to us (ispserver)
+
+A: In 2.3.6, the default is to let an unauthenticated peer only use IP
+addresses to which the machine doesn't already have a route. So on a
+machine with a default route, everyone has to authenticate. If you
+really don't want that, you can put `noauth' in the /etc/ppp/options
+file. Note that there is then no check on who is using which IP
+address. IMHO, this is undesirably insecure, but I guess it may be
+tolerable as long as you don't use any .rhosts files or anything like
+that. I recommend that you require dialin users to authenticate, even
+if just with PAP using their login password (using the `login' option
+to pppd). If you do use `noauth', you should at least have a pppusers
+group and set the permissions on pppd to allow only user and group to
+execute it.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Q: When running pppd as a dial-in server, I often get the message
+"LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests" from pppd. It seems to be
+random, but dial-out always works fine. What is wrong?
+
+A: Most modern modems auto-detects the speed of the serial line
+between the modem and the computer. This auto-detection occurs when
+the computer sends characters to the modem, when the modem is in
+command mode. It does not occur when the modem is in data mode.
+Thus, if you send commands to the modem at 2400 bps, and then change
+the serial port speed to 115200 bps, the modem will not detect this
+change until something is transmitted from the computer to the modem.
+When running pppd in dial-in mode (i.e. without a connect script),
+pppd sets the speed of the serial port, but does not transmit
+anything. If the modem was already running at the specified speed,
+everything is fine, but if not, you will just receive garbage from the
+modem. To cure this, use an init script such as the following:
+
+ pppd ttyS0 115200 modem crtscts init "chat '' AT OK"
+
+To reset the modem and enable auto-answer, use:
+
+ pppd ttyS0 115200 modem crtscts init "chat '' ATZ OK ATS0=1 OK"