13 Other messages written to the system log

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13.1 Alarm

This is not a problem. It means that a timer has expired and timers are a necessary part of the protocol establishment phase.

13.2 Unknown protocol (c025) received!.

The remote wishes to exchange Link Quality Reporting protocol with the Linux system. This protocol is presently not supported. This is not an error. It is merely saying that it has received the request and will tell the remote that "I can't do this now. Don't bother me with this!"

The Morning Star PPP package will always try to do LQR protocol. This is normal.

13.3 The connection fails with an ioctl(TIOCSCTTY) error.

Use the ppp-2.1.2b.tar.gz package. This was a bug which was not caught before the `a' package was released.

13.4 The connection fails with errors "ioctl(TIOCGETD): I/O error" or "ioctl(PPPIOCSINPSIG): I/O error". What now?

Look at the boot messages when you boot the kernel. If it says "PPP version 0.1.2" then you have an old version of the ppp.c driver.

If it says "PPP version 0.2.7" then you have the current driver, however, it was not built with the same set of defines for the ioctl numbers. Ensure that you have only one file called "ppp.h". It should be located in the kernel's include/linux directory. Once you have done this, rebuild the kernel and the pppd process.

13.5 Sometimes the messages "ioctl(PPPIOCGDEBUG): I/O error", "ioctl(TIOCSETD): I/O error" and "ioctl(TIOCNXCL): I/O error" occur. Why?

The remote system has disconnected the telephone. The tty drivers will re-establish the proper tty discipline and these errors are the result of the pppd process trying to do the same thing. These are to be expected.

13.6 My ifconfig has strange output for PPP.

Usually the ifconfig program reports information similar to the following:

ppp0      Link encap UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00 ...
          inet addr 192.76.32.2  P-t-P 129.67.1.65  Mask 255.255.255.0
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING  MTU 1500  Metric 1

The information is for display purposes only. If you are using a recent 1.2 kernel then update the nettools package with the current one on sunacm.swan.ac.uk in the directory /pub/Linux/networking/nettools.

13.7 The file /proc/net/dev seems to be empty

Did you just issue the command "ls -l /proc/net" and are wondering why the size is zero? If so, this is normal. Instead, issue the command:

cat /proc/net/dev

You should not find the file empty. The size is always shown as zero, but that is the 'proc' file system. Don't believe the size. Do the command.

The 'more', 'less', and 'most' programs may not be used to view the file directly. If you wish to use these programs, use it as follows:

cat /proc/net/dev | less

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