Re: Diald dies on closing idle link (details)

Mike Jagdis (mike@roan.co.uk)
Fri, 28 May 1999 11:37:47 +0100 (GMT/BST)


On Mon, 24 May 1999, Ralph Clark wrote:

> While diald is running but link has not been brought up yet (note THREE sl0
> routes - there should only be two created by diald: one default and one
> point-to-point):

No, there should be three :-). The 2.2.x kernels and beyond automatically
create routes when an interface is configured. Earlier kernels did not
do this so routes had to be added afterwards so diald does this itself.
Hence there will be two copies of the point to point route.

There is only one copy of the default route because the kernel cannot
infer this from the interface config so it only exists because diald
adds it.

> After diald has brought up the link (note THREE ppp0 and THREE sl0 devices).
> NB. ppp is configured to set itself up as a default route because if you don't do
> this then diald doesn't bring up the link.

This does not make sense. Packets go via the slip link to diald. Diald
sees traffic, makes a connection and runs pppd on it. Once pppd is
running diald sets routes through it. If you do not have a route
through the ppp interface when the link is "up" it is because diald
does not believe the link _is_ up. This is typical of a misconfigured
system - often because you have silly options in the global pppd
config (/etc/ppp/options) or because you are confused about the
difference between diald's seperate chat then pppd and the all-in-one
pppd connect "...". It seems that either major distributions are
getting this wrong or someone has written a completely bogus HOWTO.

> After diald has been manually shut down again (note the one of the point-to-point
> sl0 routes doesn't go away when it should).
>
> When diald dies unexpectedly, even if pppd is brought down, it fails to clear any
> of the sl0 routes.

If diald is shut down reasonably cleanly it deletes the routes it creates.
If it crashes it doesn't. Old diald's may not actually down the slip
interface though - which is the right thing to do, of course.

Incidentally diald 0.16 is *ancient*. Distributors should, at least,
be using 0.16.5 which Eric released a long time ago. Since then I've
taken over diald and newer (current 0.99) versions are available
from http://diald.unix.ch.

Mike

-- 
    A train stops at a train station, a bus stops at a bus station.
    On my desk I have a work station...
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