ppp0 fails to start at boot, only when pppoeconf is ran

["H. S." <greatexcalibur@yahoo.com>]

When I reboot Debian Sarge, kernel 2.6.7, ppp0 fails with this message:
pppd[4989]: Plugin rp-pppoe.so loaded.
pppd[4989]: Linux kernel does not support PPPoE -- are you running 2.4.x?
pppd[4989]: Exit.

After booting up, starting it also fails with the same message. I have 
to reconfigure ppp0 with
#> pppoeconf

and then ppp0 starts and stops properly without any problems (with 'pon 
dsl-provider' and 'poff -a' commands respectively). What could be wrong?

$> dpkg -l pppoe* hal udev | grep '^ii'
ii  pppoe          3.5-4          PPP over Ethernet driver
ii  pppoeconf      1.0.11         configures PPPoE/ADSL connections
ii  hal            0.2.98-6       Hardware Abstraction Layer
ii  udev           0.040-1        /dev/ management daemon


Suggestions?
->HS