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-2.4.9. 65************************ 66 67* Support for new EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) methods: 68 - Support for EAP-TLS, from Jan Just Keijser and others 69 - Support for EAP-MSCHAPv2, from Eivind Næss, Thomas Omerzu, Tijs 70 Van Buggenhout and others 71 72* New pppd options: 73 - chap-timeout 74 - chapms-strip-domain 75 - replacedefaultroute 76 - noreplacedefaultroute 77 - ipv6cp-accept-remote 78 - lcp-echo-adaptive 79 - ip-up-script 80 - ip-down-script 81 - ca 82 - capath 83 - cert 84 - key 85 - crl-dir 86 - crl 87 - max-tls-version 88 - need-peer-eap 89 90* Fixes for CVE-2020-8597 and CVE-2015-3310. 91 92* libpcap is now required when compiling on Linux (previously, if 93 libpcap was not present, pppd would be compiled without packet 94 filtering support). 95 96* The rp-pppoe plugin has been renamed to pppoe, to distinguish it 97 from the upstream rp-pppoe code. Its options have changed names, 98 but the old names are kept as aliases. 99 100* The configure script now supports cross-compilation. 101 102* Many bug fixes and cleanups. 103 104 105What was new in ppp-2.4.8. 106************************** 107 108* New pppd options have been added: 109 - ifname, to set the name for the PPP interface device 110 - defaultroute-metric, to set the metric for the default route 111 - defaultroute6, to add an IPv6 default route (with nodefaultroute6 112 to prevent adding an IPv6 default route) 113 - up_sdnotify, to have pppd notify systemd when the link is up. 114 115* The rp-pppoe plugin has new options: 116 - host-uniq, to set the Host-Uniq value to send 117 - pppoe-padi-timeout, to set the timeout for discovery packets 118 - pppoe-padi-attempts, to set the number of discovery attempts. 119 120* Added the CLASS attribute in radius packets. 121 122* Sundry bug fixes. 123 124* Fixed warnings and issues found by static analysis. 125 126* Added Submitting-patches.md. 127 128 129What was new in ppp-2.4.7. 130************************** 131 132* Fixed a potential security issue in parsing option files (CVE-2014-3158). 133 134* There is a new "stop-bits" option, which takes an argument of 1 or 2, 135 indicating the number of stop bits to use for async serial ports. 136 137* Various bug fixes. 138 139 140What was new in ppp-2.4.6. 141************************** 142 143* Man page updates. 144 145* Several bug fixes. 146 147* Options files can now set and unset environment variables for 148 scripts. 149 150* The timeout for chat scripts can now be taken from an environment 151 variable. 152 153* There is a new option, master_detach, which allows pppd to detach 154 from the controlling terminal when it is the multilink bundle master 155 but its own link has terminated, even if the nodetach option has 156 been given. 157 158 159What was new in ppp-2.4.5. 160************************** 161 162* Under Linux, pppd can now operate in a mode where it doesn't request 163 the peer's IP address, as some peers refuse to supply an IP address. 164 Since Linux supports device routes as well as gateway routes, it's 165 possible to have no remote IP address assigned to the ppp interface 166 and still route traffic over it. 167 168* Pppd now works better with 3G modems that do strange things such as 169 sending IPCP Configure-Naks with the same values over and over again. 170 171* The PPP over L2TP plugin is included, which works with the pppol2tp 172 PPP channel code in the Linux kernel. This allows pppd to be used 173 to set up tunnels using the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol. 174 175* A new 'enable-session' option has been added, which enables session 176 accounting via PAM or wtwp/wtmpx, as appropriate. See the pppd man 177 page for details. 178 179* Several bugs have been fixed. 180 181 182What was new in ppp-2.4.4. 183************************** 184 185* Pppd will now run /etc/ppp/ip-pre-up, if it exists, after creating 186 the ppp interface and configuring its IP addresses but before 187 bringing it up. This can be used, for example, for adding firewall 188 rules for the interface. 189 190* Lots of bugs fixed, particularly in the area of demand-dialled and 191 persistent connections. 192 193* The rp-pppoe plugin now accepts any interface name (that isn't an 194 existing pppd option name) without putting "nic-" on the front of 195 it, not just eth*, nas*, tap* and br*. 196 197 198What was new in ppp-2.4.3. 199************************** 200 201* The configure script now accepts --prefix and --sysconfdir options. 202 These default to /usr/local and /etc. If you want pppd put in 203 /usr/sbin as before, use ./configure --prefix=/usr. 204 205* Doing `make install' no longer puts example configuration files in 206 /etc/ppp. Use `make install-etcppp' if you want that. 207 208* The code has been updated to work with version 0.8.3 of libpcap. 209 Unfortunately the libpcap maintainers removed support for the 210 "inbound" and "outbound" keywords on PPP links, meaning that if you 211 link pppd with libpcap-0.8.3, you can't use those keywords in the 212 active-filter and pass-filter expressions. The support has been 213 reinstated in the CVS version and should be in future libpcap 214 releases. If you need the in/outbound keywords, use a later release 215 than 0.8.3, or get the CVS version from http://www.tcpdump.org. 216 217* There is a new option, child-timeout, which sets the length of time 218 that pppd will wait for child processes (such as the command 219 specified with the pty option) to exit before exiting itself. It 220 defaults to 5 seconds. After the timeout, pppd will send a SIGTERM 221 to any remaining child processes and exit. A value of 0 means no 222 timeout. 223 224* Various bugs have been fixed, including some CBCP packet parsing 225 bugs that could lead to the peer being able to crash pppd if CBCP 226 support is enabled. 227 228* Various fixes and enhancements to the radius and rp-pppoe plugins 229 have been added. 230 231* There is a new winbind plugin, from Andrew Bartlet of the Samba 232 team, which provides the ability to authenticate the peer against an 233 NT domain controller using MS-CHAP or MS-CHAPV2. 234 235* There is a new pppoatm plugin, by various authors, sent in by David 236 Woodhouse. 237 238* The multilink code has been substantially reworked. The first pppd 239 for a bundle still controls the ppp interface, but it doesn't exit 240 until all the links in the bundle have terminated. If the first 241 pppd is signalled to exit, it signals all the other pppds 242 controlling links in the bundle. 243 244* The TDB code has been updated to the latest version. This should 245 eliminate the problem that some people have seen where the database 246 file (/var/run/pppd.tdb) keeps on growing. Unfortunately, however, 247 the new code uses an incompatible database format. For this reason, 248 pppd now uses /var/run/pppd2.tdb as the database filename. 249 250 251What was new in ppp-2.4.2. 252************************** 253 254* The CHAP code has been rewritten. Pppd now has support for MS-CHAP 255 V1 and V2 authentication, both as server and client. The new CHAP 256 code is cleaner than the old code and avoids some copyright problems 257 that existed in the old code. 258 259* MPPE (Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption) support has been added, 260 although the current implementation shouldn't be considered 261 completely secure. (There is no assurance that the current code 262 won't ever transmit an unencrypted packet.) 263 264* James Carlson's implementation of the Extensible Authentication 265 Protocol (EAP) has been added. 266 267* Support for the Encryption Control Protocol (ECP) has been added. 268 269* Some new plug-ins have been included: 270 - A plug-in for kernel-mode PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet) 271 - A plug-in for supplying the PAP password over a pipe from another 272 process 273 - A plug-in for authenticating using a Radius server. 274 275* Updates and bug-fixes for the Solaris port. 276 277* The CBCP (Call Back Control Protocol) code has been updated. There 278 are new options `remotenumber' and `allow-number'. 279 280* Extra hooks for plugins to use have been added. 281 282* There is now a `maxoctets' option, which causes pppd to terminate 283 the link once the number of bytes passed on the link exceeds a given 284 value. 285 286* There are now options to control whether pppd can use the IPCP 287 IP-Address and IP-Addresses options: `ipcp-no-address' and 288 `ipcp-no-addresses'. 289 290* Fixed several bugs, including potential buffer overflows in chat. 291 292 293What was new in ppp-2.4.1. 294************************** 295 296* Pppd can now print out the set of options that are in effect. The 297 new `dump' option causes pppd to print out the option values after 298 option parsing is complete. The `dryrun' option causes pppd to 299 print the options and then exit. 300 301* The option parsing code has been fixed so that options in the 302 per-tty options file are parsed correctly, and don't override values 303 from the command line in most cases. 304 305* The plugin option now looks in /usr/lib/pppd/<pppd-version> (for 306 example, /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.1b1) for shared objects for plugins if 307 there is no slash in the plugin name. 308 309* When loading a plugin, pppd will now check the version of pppd for 310 which the plugin was compiled, and refuse to load it if it is 311 different to pppd's version string. To enable this, the plugin 312 source needs to #include "pppd.h" and have a line saying: 313 char pppd_version[] = VERSION; 314 315* There is a bug in zlib, discovered by James Carlson, which can cause 316 kernel memory corruption if Deflate is used with the lowest setting, 317 8. As a workaround pppd will now insist on using at least 9. 318 319* Pppd should compile on Solaris and SunOS again. 320 321* Pppd should now set the MTU correctly on demand-dialled interfaces. 322 323 324What was new in ppp-2.4.0. 325************************** 326 327* Multilink: this package now allows you to combine multiple serial 328 links into one logical link or `bundle', for increased bandwidth and 329 reduced latency. This is currently only supported under the 330 2.4.x and later Linux kernels. 331 332* All the pppd processes running on a system now write information 333 into a common database. I used the `tdb' code from samba for this. 334 335* New hooks have been added. 336 337For a list of the changes made during the 2.3 series releases of this 338package, see the Changes-2.3 file. 339 340 341Compression methods. 342******************** 343 344This package supports two packet compression methods: Deflate and 345BSD-Compress. Other compression methods which are in common use 346include Predictor, LZS, and MPPC. These methods are not supported for 347two reasons - they are patent-encumbered, and they cause some packets 348to expand slightly, which pppd doesn't currently allow for. 349BSD-Compress and Deflate (which uses the same algorithm as gzip) don't 350ever expand packets. 351 352 353Contacts. 354********* 355 356The comp.protocols.ppp newsgroup is a useful place to get help if you 357have trouble getting your ppp connections to work. Please do not send 358me questions of the form "please help me get connected to my ISP" - 359I'm sorry, but I simply do not have the time to answer all the 360questions like this that I get. 361 362If you find bugs in this package, please report them to the maintainer 363for the port for the operating system you are using: 364 365Linux Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> 366Solaris James Carlson <carlson@workingcode.com> 367 368 369Copyrights: 370*********** 371 372All of the code can be freely used and redistributed. The individual 373source files each have their own copyright and permission notice. 374Pppd, pppstats and pppdump are under BSD-style notices. Some of the 375pppd plugins are GPL'd. Chat is public domain. 376 377 378Distribution: 379************* 380 381The primary site for releases of this software is: 382 383 ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/ 384 385 386