Re: [Sheflug] PPP taking two calls to get going.

["Alex Hudson" <nospam [at] alexhudson.com>]

[OT: Just back off holiday as of now ;) Hi everyone.. had a lovely time in
France. A query, which anyone may care to answer: why do the French not
earth their mains spurs? I kept getting electric shocks off my laptop,
although I suppose it could have been a local earth rod that was broken, or
perhaps clay soil... any answers?]

>  I`ve been having a niggling problem with ppp recently. When using the
> modemlights applet in Gnome I have to tell it twice to bring up ppp0
before it
> does actually start the dialling process.
>
>  Here`s a section of my /var/log/messages....I`m a little worried about
the
> modprobe line.
>  Does anyone know what "char-major-108" does?

Char-major-108. When you see something like this, it refers to a physical
device on the system. The first word is either 'char' or 'block', since
devices are either character devices (sequential in nature) or block devices
(non-sequential). The next word is 'major', and the number following it
'108': this identifies the class of device: that with the major number 108.
The 108th sequential device is 'ppp'. (The other option that could be
specified is 'minor-*', referring to the devices' minor number. This
indiates which actual device of this type it is: for example;
block-major-3-minor-1 is /dev/hda1, block-major-3-minor-2 is /dev/hda2,
although often the 'minor-' is left out, just to confuse people. Make sense
yet?).

> Aug 11 18:21:54 localhost ifup-ppp: pppd started for ppp0 on /dev/modem at
> 115200
> Aug 12 17:15:58 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module
char-major-108

Um..... Aug 12; 17:15??? You've been cutting and pasting, haven't you? ;))

> Aug 11 18:21:54 localhost kernel: CSLIP: code copyright 1989 Regents of
the
> University of California
> Aug 11 18:21:54 localhost kernel: PPP: version 2.3.7 (demand dialling)
> Aug 11 18:21:54 localhost kernel: PPP line discipline registered.
> Aug 11 18:21:54 localhost kernel: registered device ppp0
> Aug 11 18:21:55 localhost ifup-ppp: pppd started for ppp0 on /dev/modem at
> 115200
> Aug 11 18:21:55 localhost pppd[709]: pppd 2.3.10 started by root, uid 0
> Aug 11 18:22:27 localhost pppd[709]: Serial connection established.
> Aug 11 18:22:27 localhost pppd[709]: Using interface ppp0
> Aug 11 18:22:27 localhost pppd[709]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/modem
> Aug 11 18:22:31 localhost kernel: PPP BSD Compression module registered
> Aug 11 18:22:31 localhost kernel: PPP Deflate Compression module
registered
> Aug 11 18:22:32 localhost pppd[709]: local  IP address........and so on.
>
>  Does anyone know how to solve this?

Sounds like you could have a problem in conf.modules, or in your ifup
script. Certainly, your /var/log/messages output looks dodgy; did you mess
with it?? Truth is, I use kppp rather than scripts, but it could be that
something is trying to use ppp before it's ready: that might prompt the
kernel to search for the module for the device. But, I don't like the look
of your /var/log/messages, and that kind of makes it hard to diagnose what
problem you might be having. I've never seen a message appear out of order
in there (has anyone else? maybe it's just me...), and ~30secs for a
connection seems an awful long time, but not out of the realms of
possibility I guess. You also seem to have two versions of pppd on your
system - is that normal, my eyes, or more cutting and pasting? Certainly,
your script is reporting starting two pppd's ;) As I don't use pppd
(directly ;), I'm not familiar with it's output: it looks a little suspect
to me, but it could be normal. Worth checking, anyhow. Is it possible you
upgraded pppd manually, and botched it? I'd check for that, and also the
configuration of your modules.conf / conf.modules.

Cheers,

Alex.


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