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