Bug#618637: kppp does not work after upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze

[whitehea@eecs.utk.edu]

I have what appears to be the same problem.  To shed some light on it, I traced system
calls made by kppp to find out what arguments it passes to pppd, as follows:

    su -p
    strace  -u <username>  -f  -s 100  -e trace=fork,vfork,execve  2>&1   kppp

(The -u flag in the strace man page explains why it is necessary in this case to run
strace with root privileges, using the -u flag to pass in your ordinary username (under
which you would normally be running kppp.))

The following excerpt from the output of this strace command shows pppd being called:

    ...
    Opener: received OpenDevice
    Opener: received ExecPPPDaemon
    Process 2097 attached
    In parent: pppd pid 2097
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    Kernel supports ppp alright.
    [pid  2097] execve("/usr/sbin/pppd", ["pppd", "115200", "-detach", "crtscts",
"defaultroute", "usepeerdns", "user", "bwhitehe"], [/* 0 vars */]) = 0
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    pppd: The remote system is required to authenticate itself
    pppd: but I couldn't find any suitable secret (password) for it to use to do so.
pppd: (None of the available passwords would let it use an IP address.) Process 2097
detached
    [pid  2094] --- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
    It was pppd that died
    pppd exited with return value 1
    ...

Based on the mention of /etc/ppp/peers/kppp-options at the beginning of the original bug
report (and on my experience with older versions of kppp) I was expecting an argument
like

    call kppp-options

to show up in the argument list passed to pppd, but it's not there.  It seems to me that
the absence of "call kppp-options" or anything like that in pppd's arguments might
explain why pppd doesn't see Mark's "noauth" option in /etc/ppp/peers/kppp-options, and
thus why you get "pppd: The remote system is required to authenticate itself ..." in the
original bug report

This suggests the following workaround, which gets kppp functioning for me.  (Mark, I
guess you've already done step 1, but I'm including it below because
/etc/ppp/peers/kppp-options was not present in my fresh install of squeeze.)


WORKAROUND

(1) as root, create (or edit) the file /etc/ppp/peers/kppp-options so that it has one
line containing the uncommented word

    noauth

(2) In the "Accounts" tab of kppp configuration, edit your account as follows:  In the
"Dial" tab, near the bottom of the window, select "Customize pppd arguments" and add the
following argument:

    call kppp-options

(3) Run kppp in a terminal window (as in the original bug report)

-----------

After doing this, my output from step 3 is:

    ~$ kppp
    Opener: received SetSecret
    Opener: received SetSecret
    Opener: received OpenLock

    Opener: received OpenDevice
    Opener: received ExecPPPDaemon
    In parent: pppd pid 2192
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    Kernel supports ppp alright.
    Couldn't find interface ppp0: No such device
    Opener: received OpenResolv
    Opener: received RemoveSecret
    Opener: received RemoveSecret

but in spite of these remaining complaints, the ppp0 interface appears to be running OK
based on the output of ifconfig ppp0 and on apparently normal network functioning of my
ssh client and my web browser.

-Bruce