xref: /netbsd-src/external/bsd/ppp/dist/README (revision 0f0dec65909b0e94c58491b896daf823c738d41d)
1This is the README file for ppp-2.5, a package which implements the
2Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) to provide Internet connections over
3serial lines and other types of links which can be considered to be
4point-to-point links.
5
6
7Introduction.
8*************
9
10The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) provides a standard way to establish
11a network connection over a serial link.  At present, this package
12supports IP and IPV6 and the protocols layered above them, such as TCP
13and UDP.
14
15This PPP implementation consists of two parts:
16
17- Kernel code, which establishes a network interface and passes
18packets between the serial port, the kernel networking code and the
19PPP daemon (pppd).  This code is implemented using STREAMS modules on
20Solaris, and as a line discipline under Linux.
21
22- The PPP daemon (pppd), which negotiates with the peer to establish
23the link and sets up the ppp network interface.  Pppd includes support
24for authentication, so you can control which other systems may make a
25PPP connection and what IP addresses they may use.
26
27The platforms supported by this package are Linux and Solaris.
28(There is also code to support various old flavours of Unix in the git
29repository, but it is quite old and unmaintained.)
30
31The kernel code for Linux is no longer distributed with this package,
32since the relevant kernel code is in the official Linux kernel source
33(and has been for many years) and is included in all reasonably modern
34Linux distributions.  The Linux kernel code supports using PPP over
35things other than serial ports, such as PPP over Ethernet and PPP over
36ATM.
37
38Similarly, the kernel code for Solaris is no longer distributed with
39this package.  See the Illumos web site for pointers to the kernel
40module source code and build environment.
41
42  https://www.illumos.org/
43
44
45Installation.
46*************
47
48The file SETUP contains general information about setting up your
49system for using PPP.  There is also a README file for each supported
50system, which contains more specific details for installing PPP on
51that system.  The supported systems, and the corresponding README
52files, are:
53
54	Linux				README.linux
55	Solaris				README.sol2
56
57In each case you start by running the ./configure script.  This works
58out which operating system you are using and creates the appropriate
59makefiles.  You then run `make' to compile the user-level code, and
60(as root) `make install' to install the user-level programs pppd, chat
61and pppstats.
62
63N.B. Since 2.3.0, leaving the permitted IP addresses column of the
64pap-secrets or chap-secrets file empty means that no addresses are
65permitted.  You need to put a "*" in that column to allow the peer to
66use any IP address.  (This only applies where the peer is
67authenticating itself to you, of course.)
68
69
70What's new in ppp-2.5.2
71***********************
72
73* Some old and probably unused code has been removed, notably the
74  pppgetpass program and the passprompt plugin, and some of the files
75  in the sample and scripts directories.
76
77* If a remote number has been set, it is available to scripts in the
78  REMOTENUMBER environment variable.
79
80* The Solaris port has been updated, including updated installation
81  instructions in README.sol2.
82
83* Various other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
84
85
86What was new in ppp-2.5.1
87*************************
88
89* The files copied to /etc/ppp (or <sysconfdir>/ppp) now have
90  ".example" appended to their filenames, so as to indicate that they
91  are just examples, and to avoid overwriting existing configuration
92  files.
93
94* Pppd can now measure and log the round-trip time (RTT) of LCP
95  echo-requests and record them in a binary file structured as a
96  circular buffer.  Other programs or scripts can examine the file and
97  provide real-time statistics on link latency.  This is enabled by a
98  new "lcp-rtt-file" option.
99
100* New scripts net-init, net-pre-up and net-down are executed in the
101  process of bringing the network interface up and down.  They provide
102  additional, more deterministic ways for pppd to interact with the
103  rest of the networking configuration.
104
105* New options have been added to allow the system administrator to
106  set the location of various scripts and secrets files.
107
108* A new "noresolvconf" option tells pppd not to write the
109  /etc/ppp/resolv.conf file; DNS server addresses, if obtained from
110  the peer, are still passed to scripts in the environment.
111
112* Pppd will now create the directory for the TDB connection database
113  if it doesn't already exist.
114
115* Kernel module code for Solaris is no longer included.
116
117* Support for decompressing compressed packets has been removed from
118  pppdump, because the zlib code used was old and potentially
119  vulnerable.
120
121* Some old code has been removed.
122
123* Various other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
124
125
126What was new in ppp-2.5.0.
127**************************
128
129The 2.5.0 release is a major release of pppd which contains breaking
130changes for third-party plugins, a complete revamp of the build-system
131and that allows for flexibility of configuring features as needed.
132
133In Summary:
134* Support for PEAP authentication by Eivind Næss and Rustam Kovhaev
135* Support for loading PKCS12 certificate envelopes
136* Adoption of GNU Autoconf / Automake build environment, by Eivind Næss
137  and others.
138* Support for pkgconfig tool has been added by Eivind Næss.
139* Bunch of fixes and cleanup to PPPoE and IPv6 support by Pali Rohár.
140* Major revision to PPPD's Plugin API by Eivind Næss.
141  - Defines in which describes what features was included in pppd
142  - Functions now prefixed with explicit ppp_* to indicate that
143    pppd functions being called.
144  - Header files were renamed to better align with their features,
145    and now use proper include guards
146  - A pppdconf.h file is supplied to allow third-party modules to use
147    the same feature defines pppd was compiled with.
148  - No extern declarations of internal variable names of pppd,
149    continued use of these extern variables are considered
150    unstable.
151* Lots of internal fixes and cleanups for Radius and PPPoE by Jaco Kroon
152* Dropped IPX support, as Linux has dropped support in version 5.15
153  for this protocol.
154* Many more fixes and cleanups.
155* Pppd is no longer installed setuid-root.
156* New pppd options:
157  - ipv6cp-noremote, ipv6cp-nosend, ipv6cp-use-remotenumber,
158    ipv6-up-script, ipv6-down-script
159  - -v, show-options
160  - usepeerwins, ipcp-no-address, ipcp-no-addresses, nosendip
161* On Linux, any baud rate can be set on a serial port provided the
162  kernel serial driver supports that.
163
164Note that if you have built and installed previous versions of this
165package and you want to continue having configuration and TDB files in
166/etc/ppp, you will need to use the --sysconfdir option to ./configure.
167
168For a list of the changes made during the 2.4 series releases of this
169package, see the Changes-2.4 file.
170
171
172Compression methods.
173********************
174
175This package supports two packet compression methods: Deflate and
176BSD-Compress.  Other compression methods which are in common use
177include Predictor, LZS, and MPPC.  These methods are not supported for
178two reasons - they are patent-encumbered, and they cause some packets
179to expand slightly, which pppd doesn't currently allow for.
180BSD-Compress and Deflate (which uses the same algorithm as gzip) don't
181ever expand packets.
182
183
184Contacts.
185*********
186
187Most communication relating to this package happens on github at
188https://github.com/ppp-project/ppp/.  The linux-ppp@vger.kernel.org
189mailing list also exists and can be used.
190
191If you find bugs in this package, the best thing to do is to create an
192issue on github.  If you can't or don't want to do that, you can post
193to linux-ppp@vger.kernel.org, or report them to the maintainer for the
194port for the operating system you are using:
195
196Linux			Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>
197Solaris			James Carlson <carlsonj@workingcode.com>
198
199
200Copyrights:
201***********
202
203All of the code can be freely used and redistributed.  The individual
204source files each have their own copyright and permission notice.
205Pppd, pppstats and pppdump are under BSD-style notices.  Some of the
206pppd plugins are GPL'd.  Chat has an MIT licence notice.
207
208
209Distribution:
210*************
211
212The primary site for releases of this software is:
213
214	ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/
215
216
217