> Pardon me if I'm not understanding something correctly, I'm a
> little green with this. But, I've been under the impression that
> ppp-2.3.1 is the current definitive ppp distribution, with the Linux port
> being maintained by Al Lonyear.
I try to keep it up to date. However, I have been unable to run the 2.1
series kernels before 2.1.50 because they would not build with my
configuration.
(Also, I have been spending the past seven months trying to start a new
business and as most anyone who has done that will tell you that it is
a 12 hour, 7 day a week 'job'. It was much easier just working for someone
else. :) )
> I've been using that with kernels 2.1.48
> up with great success. As we know, the ppp distribution basically nukes
> several of the linux kernel source files and replaces them with it's own.
> Now the fun part.. the 2.1.54 patch makes changes to (the
> original) ppp.c. The changes themselves occur after the release of
> ppp-2.3.1's copy of ppp.c, yet the distribution copy is still dated later
> (someone forget to update ==FILEVERSION?) I'm deducing that ppp is
> undergoing parallel maintainance and I'm wondering if this is going to
> confuse someone (more important than I :) down the road.
Don't forget that the glibc 2.0 library is something different yet! It, too,
causes 'problems' for the pppd package versioning.
> For now I'm just re-installing the ppp.c from the ppp distribution
> over the stock kernel one.
The ppp software is somewhat strange. The fact is that the driver is
useless without the daemon and the daemon is useless without the driver.
The two are inexorably intertwined.
The difficulty is further enhanced by requiring that the driver be updated
when you update the daemon and that the driver is updated when changes are
made to the networking code but have not been implemented in the driver with
the pppd package.
So, in order to try to determine if the driver in the kernel is newer than
the one with the pppd package, I added a stamp to the files in the kernel
and the driver. This is the ==FILEVERSION== tag.
I had hoped that the people who changed the driver in the kernel by sending
patches to Linus when the networking logic is changed would have updated the
date tag.
This seems to have been a vain hope.
So, this causes the problems that people have. It causes the wrong version
to be installed and the code to not work.
PLEASE, PLEASE, People who change the ppp.c driver for the kernel UPDATE THE
DATE STAMP at the same time!!
Thanks.
-- Al Longyear longyear@netcom.com Finger for PGP key Design is about changing your mind until you get it correct.