1This is the README file for ppp-2.4, a package which implements the 2Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) to provide Internet connections over 3serial lines. 4 5 6Introduction. 7************* 8 9The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) provides a standard way to establish 10a network connection over a serial link. At present, this package 11supports IP and IPV6 and the protocols layered above them, such as TCP 12and UDP. The Linux port of this package also has support for IPX. 13 14This PPP implementation consists of two parts: 15 16- Kernel code, which establishes a network interface and passes 17packets between the serial port, the kernel networking code and the 18PPP daemon (pppd). This code is implemented using STREAMS modules on 19Solaris, and as a line discipline under Linux. 20 21- The PPP daemon (pppd), which negotiates with the peer to establish 22the link and sets up the ppp network interface. Pppd includes support 23for authentication, so you can control which other systems may make a 24PPP connection and what IP addresses they may use. 25 26The platforms supported by this package are Linux and Solaris. I have 27code for NeXTStep, FreeBSD, SunOS 4.x, SVR4, Tru64 (Digital Unix), AIX 28and Ultrix but no active maintainers for these platforms. Code for 29all of these except AIX is included in the ppp-2.3.11 release. 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 38 39Installation. 40************* 41 42The file SETUP contains general information about setting up your 43system for using PPP. There is also a README file for each supported 44system, which contains more specific details for installing PPP on 45that system. The supported systems, and the corresponding README 46files, are: 47 48 Linux README.linux 49 Solaris README.sol2 50 51In each case you start by running the ./configure script. This works 52out which operating system you are using and creates the appropriate 53makefiles. You then run `make' to compile the user-level code, and 54(as root) `make install' to install the user-level programs pppd, chat 55and pppstats. 56 57N.B. Since 2.3.0, leaving the permitted IP addresses column of the 58pap-secrets or chap-secrets file empty means that no addresses are 59permitted. You need to put a "*" in that column to allow the peer to 60use any IP address. (This only applies where the peer is 61authenticating itself to you, of course.) 62 63 64What's new in ppp-2.4.5. 65************************ 66 67* Under Linux, pppd can now operate in a mode where it doesn't request 68 the peer's IP address, as some peers refuse to supply an IP address. 69 Since Linux supports device routes as well as gateway routes, it's 70 possible to have no remote IP address assigned to the ppp interface 71 and still route traffic over it. 72 73* Pppd now works better with 3G modems that do strange things such as 74 sending IPCP Configure-Naks with the same values over and over again. 75 76* The PPP over L2TP plugin is included, which works with the pppol2tp 77 PPP channel code in the Linux kernel. This allows pppd to be used 78 to set up tunnels using the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol. 79 80* A new 'enable-session' option has been added, which enables session 81 accounting via PAM or wtwp/wtmpx, as appropriate. See the pppd man 82 page for details. 83 84* Several bugs have been fixed. 85 86 87What was new in ppp-2.4.4. 88************************** 89 90* Pppd will now run /etc/ppp/ip-pre-up, if it exists, after creating 91 the ppp interface and configuring its IP addresses but before 92 bringing it up. This can be used, for example, for adding firewall 93 rules for the interface. 94 95* Lots of bugs fixed, particularly in the area of demand-dialled and 96 persistent connections. 97 98* The rp-pppoe plugin now accepts any interface name (that isn't an 99 existing pppd option name) without putting "nic-" on the front of 100 it, not just eth*, nas*, tap* and br*. 101 102 103What was new in ppp-2.4.3. 104************************** 105 106* The configure script now accepts --prefix and --sysconfdir options. 107 These default to /usr/local and /etc. If you want pppd put in 108 /usr/sbin as before, use ./configure --prefix=/usr. 109 110* Doing `make install' no longer puts example configuration files in 111 /etc/ppp. Use `make install-etcppp' if you want that. 112 113* The code has been updated to work with version 0.8.3 of libpcap. 114 Unfortunately the libpcap maintainers removed support for the 115 "inbound" and "outbound" keywords on PPP links, meaning that if you 116 link pppd with libpcap-0.8.3, you can't use those keywords in the 117 active-filter and pass-filter expressions. The support has been 118 reinstated in the CVS version and should be in future libpcap 119 releases. If you need the in/outbound keywords, use a later release 120 than 0.8.3, or get the CVS version from http://www.tcpdump.org. 121 122* There is a new option, child-timeout, which sets the length of time 123 that pppd will wait for child processes (such as the command 124 specified with the pty option) to exit before exiting itself. It 125 defaults to 5 seconds. After the timeout, pppd will send a SIGTERM 126 to any remaining child processes and exit. A value of 0 means no 127 timeout. 128 129* Various bugs have been fixed, including some CBCP packet parsing 130 bugs that could lead to the peer being able to crash pppd if CBCP 131 support is enabled. 132 133* Various fixes and enhancements to the radius and rp-pppoe plugins 134 have been added. 135 136* There is a new winbind plugin, from Andrew Bartlet of the Samba 137 team, which provides the ability to authenticate the peer against an 138 NT domain controller using MS-CHAP or MS-CHAPV2. 139 140* There is a new pppoatm plugin, by various authors, sent in by David 141 Woodhouse. 142 143* The multilink code has been substantially reworked. The first pppd 144 for a bundle still controls the ppp interface, but it doesn't exit 145 until all the links in the bundle have terminated. If the first 146 pppd is signalled to exit, it signals all the other pppds 147 controlling links in the bundle. 148 149* The TDB code has been updated to the latest version. This should 150 eliminate the problem that some people have seen where the database 151 file (/var/run/pppd.tdb) keeps on growing. Unfortunately, however, 152 the new code uses an incompatible database format. For this reason, 153 pppd now uses /var/run/pppd2.tdb as the database filename. 154 155 156What was new in ppp-2.4.2. 157************************** 158 159* The CHAP code has been rewritten. Pppd now has support for MS-CHAP 160 V1 and V2 authentication, both as server and client. The new CHAP 161 code is cleaner than the old code and avoids some copyright problems 162 that existed in the old code. 163 164* MPPE (Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption) support has been added, 165 although the current implementation shouldn't be considered 166 completely secure. (There is no assurance that the current code 167 won't ever transmit an unencrypted packet.) 168 169* James Carlson's implementation of the Extensible Authentication 170 Protocol (EAP) has been added. 171 172* Support for the Encryption Control Protocol (ECP) has been added. 173 174* Some new plug-ins have been included: 175 - A plug-in for kernel-mode PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet) 176 - A plug-in for supplying the PAP password over a pipe from another 177 process 178 - A plug-in for authenticating using a Radius server. 179 180* Updates and bug-fixes for the Solaris port. 181 182* The CBCP (Call Back Control Protocol) code has been updated. There 183 are new options `remotenumber' and `allow-number'. 184 185* Extra hooks for plugins to use have been added. 186 187* There is now a `maxoctets' option, which causes pppd to terminate 188 the link once the number of bytes passed on the link exceeds a given 189 value. 190 191* There are now options to control whether pppd can use the IPCP 192 IP-Address and IP-Addresses options: `ipcp-no-address' and 193 `ipcp-no-addresses'. 194 195* Fixed several bugs, including potential buffer overflows in chat. 196 197 198What was new in ppp-2.4.1. 199************************** 200 201* Pppd can now print out the set of options that are in effect. The 202 new `dump' option causes pppd to print out the option values after 203 option parsing is complete. The `dryrun' option causes pppd to 204 print the options and then exit. 205 206* The option parsing code has been fixed so that options in the 207 per-tty options file are parsed correctly, and don't override values 208 from the command line in most cases. 209 210* The plugin option now looks in /usr/lib/pppd/<pppd-version> (for 211 example, /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.1b1) for shared objects for plugins if 212 there is no slash in the plugin name. 213 214* When loading a plugin, pppd will now check the version of pppd for 215 which the plugin was compiled, and refuse to load it if it is 216 different to pppd's version string. To enable this, the plugin 217 source needs to #include "pppd.h" and have a line saying: 218 char pppd_version[] = VERSION; 219 220* There is a bug in zlib, discovered by James Carlson, which can cause 221 kernel memory corruption if Deflate is used with the lowest setting, 222 8. As a workaround pppd will now insist on using at least 9. 223 224* Pppd should compile on Solaris and SunOS again. 225 226* Pppd should now set the MTU correctly on demand-dialled interfaces. 227 228 229What was new in ppp-2.4.0. 230************************** 231 232* Multilink: this package now allows you to combine multiple serial 233 links into one logical link or `bundle', for increased bandwidth and 234 reduced latency. This is currently only supported under the 235 2.4.x and later Linux kernels. 236 237* All the pppd processes running on a system now write information 238 into a common database. I used the `tdb' code from samba for this. 239 240* New hooks have been added. 241 242For a list of the changes made during the 2.3 series releases of this 243package, see the Changes-2.3 file. 244 245 246Compression methods. 247******************** 248 249This package supports two packet compression methods: Deflate and 250BSD-Compress. Other compression methods which are in common use 251include Predictor, LZS, and MPPC. These methods are not supported for 252two reasons - they are patent-encumbered, and they cause some packets 253to expand slightly, which pppd doesn't currently allow for. 254BSD-Compress and Deflate (which uses the same algorithm as gzip) don't 255ever expand packets. 256 257 258Contacts. 259********* 260 261The comp.protocols.ppp newsgroup is a useful place to get help if you 262have trouble getting your ppp connections to work. Please do not send 263me questions of the form "please help me get connected to my ISP" - 264I'm sorry, but I simply do not have the time to answer all the 265questions like this that I get. 266 267If you find bugs in this package, please report them to the maintainer 268for the port for the operating system you are using: 269 270Linux Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> 271Solaris James Carlson <carlson@workingcode.com> 272 273 274Copyrights: 275*********** 276 277All of the code can be freely used and redistributed. The individual 278source files each have their own copyright and permission notice. 279Pppd, pppstats and pppdump are under BSD-style notices. Some of the 280pppd plugins are GPL'd. Chat is public domain. 281 282 283Distribution: 284************* 285 286The primary site for releases of this software is: 287 288 ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/ 289 290 291